Gary Neville thinks Graham Potter told Chelsea recruitment chiefs Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart to “get me out of here”.
Widespread reports claim that Winstanley – who Potter worked with at Brighton – and Stewart were involved in the decision to sack the Englishman on Sunday and the duo will conduct the search for a successor.
Their 2-0 loss to Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge was the final straw after Potter had won just 12 of his 31 matches in charge since replacing Thomas Tuchel in September.
Chelsea have won just four of their last 19 Premier League matches with the Blues slipping into the bottom half following their defeat to Unai Emery’s side.
And Neville reckons Potter will have been relieved to have left Chelsea amid the chaotic scenes since Todd Boehly led a takeover of the club last year.
Former Manchester United defender Neville told Sky Sports: “Graham Potter is a good man. He’ll have gone home after he was sacked and I bet there was an element of relief.
“I don’t think he was enjoying it there, I bet he will have thought it was mad.
“What he has been used to in terms of what his view of football is, he will have seen what is going on behind the scenes – they lost Petr Cech and Marina Granovskaia at the start of the season, that wasn’t planned.
“They lost [Thomas] Tuchel, that wasn’t planned. He has come into a club that is in massive transition, they [Todd Boehly and co.] have paid millions of pounds, they don’t know what they are doing to be fair, they are learning on the job.
“He’ll probably think, ‘These lot are mad’, and actually I suspect that Graham Potter has gone to Winstanley and said, ‘Get me out of here’.”
And Neville thinks former Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino is the man to replace Potter as the Argentine will “like the squad” at Stamford Bridge.
Neville added: “Everything Chelsea is saying and Boehly is saying is that they have spent £600million and they have done their spending apart from a centre-forward for the next three years.
“If they sign [Zinedine] Zidane, [Diego] Simeone, Enrique, they are going to want another £300m because they won’t like some of the players they have signed.
“They have got to appoint a manager that is going to inherit and like the squad they have already got. I think that man, because a lot of them are young, is Pochettino.”
READ MORE: Graham Potter ousted for ‘shiny new toy from Germany’ as British media reacts
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