West Ham 'don't need drastic change' to succeed

West Ham United face newly promoted Sunderland in the Premier League on Saturday, with manager Graham Potter determined that any improvements this season should emerge from solid foundations.

Potter felt he inherited a mess at the London Stadium when he was brought in to replace Julen Lopetegui in January.

While he could identify what was wrong, the 50-year-old could not start fixing the issues properly until this summer.

That meant he oversaw just one victory in his first six games and a run of eight without a win, before an end of season rally took West Ham up to 14th.

It represented a fairly underwhelming introduction to life at London Stadium for Potter on his return to the game, 21 months after being sacked by Chelsea.

Given new signings have been slow to arrive, it is easy to imagine the likes of Antonio Conte or Jose Mourinho reacting to the same scenario by furiously demanding more bodies, no matter the cost.

But that is not Potter's way.

He can lose his cool - and he did in Chicago last month, with Potter fiercely criticising the decision to have cooling breaks when West Ham beat Everton on a cold, wet and windy night during the Premier League Summer Series.

But Potter prefers to address issues in a more measured, methodical way.

"The coach's job is to build something," he said.

"You've got to try and improve your team, improve the club, improve the players. That's the trick.

"I don't know what the perception of me is to be honest. I can have my water-break tirade with the best of them.

"But everybody's different, I suppose. I've always tried to do what I think is the right thing for the club.

"At the end of the day, West Ham is the most important thing. I'm an employee."

There wasn't much of a transfer budget at Swedish fourth-tier outfit Ostersunds, where Potter began his managerial career.

Yet his patient, clear-sighted approach brought three promotions and a historic Swedish Cup triumph that secured the club's first European campaign, courtesy of getting through three qualifying rounds.

Ostersunds were eventually eliminated in the last 32 by Arsenal - but not before winning at Emirates Stadium.

The lessons learned during that time served Potter well at Swansea and Brighton, but it was impossible to adopt the same approach when he left for Chelsea in September 2022.

In the transfer window just before Potter arrived, Chelsea signed 10 players and either sold or loaned out 15 - and that was just among those who could be considered first-team squad members.

In that January, Chelsea spent more than £280m on another seven players and signed Joao Felix on loan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Potter found it difficult to implement the plans he wanted and was sacked after just seven months in charge.

"I've experienced what £300m can do," he said. "It's not always positive.

"You just deal with what you have, work with the people in the club and represent it the best way, by staying as close to the person I am as I can.

"I think I've done that pretty much all my career."

Including striker Michail Antonio - whose exit as a player was confirmed on 7 August - West Ham have released six senior members of Potter's squad since the end of last season.

Striker Callum Wilson and defender Kyle Walker-Peters have arrived on free transfers, while the £55m generated by the sale of Mohammed Kudus to Tottenham has been spent on goalkeeper Mads Hermansen and El Hadji Malick Diouf, as well as paying a large chunk of the £34.2m it cost to turn Jean-Clair Todibo's loan from Nice into a permanent deal.

Many West Ham supporters think it is not enough.

Potter accepts the club's recruitment chiefs will keep looking for targets but cautions against the temptation to buy for the sake of it.

"I don't think we needed drastic change," he said.

"It's tempting to think that the solution is going to be external but, from my perspective, the focus should always be on the players you have - with an eye on improving.

"When we arrived there was, for different reasons, a low-trust environment. When you change the manager halfway through the season, there's a feeling something isn't quite working.

"If you look back over a 12-month period up to that point, the team had conceded a lot of goals which is an indication that, maybe, something wasn't quite right on a cultural or foundation level.

"It was something we started to do a lot of work with last season. We did make some progress but pre-season gives you a chance to make more of an inroad, which I think we have done."