Graham Potter believes that Chelsea is perhaps the best thing ever happened to him.
West Ham -Baas Potter returns on Monday evening for the first time since his 'traumatic' dismissal almost two years ago for the first time since his 'traumatic' resignation back to the Stamford Bridge.
Potter was fired by Chelsea after less than seven months the leadership and did not return to management until he had accepted the Hammersbaan in January.
“You're going to get ups and downs and it was a period that of course I wanted it to go better,” said Potter.
“I didn't want to lose my job. But at the same time I look back now and maybe this is the best thing that happened to me and maybe the next 10-20 years will be great because of the experience I have had. I just see it as a learning experience.
'Sometimes those who are more traumatic and more difficult and all the more intense, they are those who, if you can allow them, are those who can make the biggest difference in terms of growth and development.
'When I look back on my career, I started in the ninth layer in English or the four layer in Swedish football and ended up in Chelsea in the last eight of the Champions League. That was the result of not necessarily good or not.
“It's just by being:” How can I get better, how can I improve? What can I learn? ” I think you should take that with the good and the bad. And it wasn't all bad, but it clearly ended quickly. So it must have been bad. But now I am here and I feel good, I feel happy, I feel motivated. '
Potter's experience in Chelsea was so brutal, one who saw him the death threats and also coincided with the new owners of the club who gave £ 300 million in the January transfer star and signed so many players who had to sit on the floor that it Let him wait more than 20 months to return to management.
During his time away from the game, he traveled to the Falklands to lead the British troops. He met England rugby -head coach Steve Borthwick. He went to a Taylor Swift concert. He spent a lot of time in the gym. He learned Spanish. He went to watch competitions, unintentionally addressing speculation on the then oppressed Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson when he was in the stands.
Potter believes that he has returned a more self -assured coach and, after a hectic start of life in West Ham after firing Julen Lopetegui, he takes his side to Chelsea on the back of an impressive draw at Aston Villa and a fresh air of Positivity around the club.
'I needed a few months to give myself the time to think and decompry and deal with it.
'Twelve years of that trip through three countries, Wales and Sweden and England, and some personal things that took place at that time, I just felt that it was the right moment for me as a person and as a coach not to necessarily dive back into something.
'It was an intense experience and if it doesn't go how you want it to go, you have to interrogate yourself, you have to analyze yourself and ask what I could have done better.
'There are other factors underway, but at the same time you cannot only blame the club, you have to take responsibility for the things you can do better.
“I would like to think that I did that and I think I made that a better person and more confident wiser person.”
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