By taking charge of a Champions League game with Chelsea, Graham Potter highlighted England’s manager shortage

Can you name the eight English managers to lead a side in the Champions League in 60 seconds? Go!

No, put away your phone. Google is cheating. Yes, that’s right, you’ve got Bobby Robson and Harry Redknapp… And Graham Potter last week on his Chelsea dugout debut, yes. Come on, join the dots, I can almost see it in your eyes… yes! Frank Lampard at Chelsea, too.

Yup, Valencia were in the Champions League when Gary Neville was in charge for that ill-fated four-month spell. Only three more to get. Need a clue? Think of good clubs in the 1990s and the Bard of Avon…

Ok, I’ll put you out of your misery. You’re way over the minute mark anyway. Craig Shakespeare at Leicester City. Howard Wilkinson, Leeds United. Ray Harford, Blackburn Rovers.

That’s it. They are the sum total of what the English coaching fraternity has produced to take on the world’s best during the Champions League era of the past 30 years.

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Even then, they’ve mostly managed a handful of games each. Wilkinson, the first Englishman to manage a club when the European Cup was rebranded in 1992, took charge of only five, although it was an extraordinarily wild ride.

Teams used to play two, two-legged, knockout ties before reaching the group stage back then, and Leeds were thrashed 3-0 by Stuttgart in Germany then seemingly knocked out on away goals when they won the Elland Road leg 4-1. However, at the time clubs were permitted to field only three foreign players, and it emerged that bringing on Jovo Simanic in the second leg had taken Stuttgart over the limit.

Uefa decided to void the result and award Leeds a 3-0 victory, then scheduled a replay at the Nou Camp (obviously). Leeds won it 2-1, before being knocked out by two defeats to Rangers. And that was that for Wilkinson.

By 1994, when Harford had his shot, teams went straight into a group stage and Blackburn Rovers drew Spartak Moscow, Rosenborg and Legia Warsaw. But, in contrast to their Premier League title-winning form, they lost their opening three games, drew one and were out by game five after a thrashing by the Russia side, before a consolation victory in a meaningless sixth.

Robson is arguably the most successful of the bunch, managing three clubs in three countries in the Champions League. Spells at Porto and PSV Eindhoven yielded group stage eliminations and the furthest he reached was the second group stage, as the format was then, in some entertaining runs with Newcastle United.

Redknapp runs Robson a close second, with his Tottenham side, in possession of Gareth Bale on the verge of superstardom, that knocked Inter Milan out before losing to Real Madrid in the quarter-finals.

Neville got one solitary group game at Valencia and lost it. Shakespeare had three games at Leicester after Claudio Ranieri navigated them through the group stage: one win, one draw and one defeat. Lampard made it through the group stage with Chelsea who were thrashed by Bayern Munich in the Last 16, and became only the second English manager, after Robson, to manage in the Champions League across two seasons.

And then there is Potter, who had not even attended a Champions League tie before taking charge of Chelsea’s draw against RB Salzburg.

If you include qualifying matches, that brings up a grand total of 67 games: 24 wins, 15 draws, 28 defeats. A win percentage of 35.8 per cent. With Robson doing a fair bit of heavy lifting in there, accounting for half the victories and 44.7 per cent of the games played.

It’s a pretty damning indictment, but of what? The system producing English coaches? The stranglehold of foreign owners on the Premier League clubs who most frequent the Champions League?

Part of the rationale behind creating and building St George’s Park was to nurture the next generation of homegrown coaches and managers, as well as streamlining the playing side that has produced such riches of results in the past decade.

It’s bearing some fruit. Steve Cooper’s first managerial jobs were with England’s Under 16s, then 17s, from 2014 to 2019, followed by a two-year stint at Swansea, where he twice made the Championship play-offs (including the final in 2021), before going one better at Nottingham Forest.

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And then there’s Gareth Southgate, who seemed to swoop from nowhere to become England’s most successful manager in half-a-century. But though we know he can do it in a European Championship semi-final at Wembley, can he still do it on a pleasantly warm Tuesday night in Barcelona?

Others have come close. Roy Hodgson was manager of Liverpool in the wrong era, managing them in the Europa League in a dismal six-month spell.

Eddie Howe was the cream of the crop for his work at Bournemouth, leading them up the pyramid and establishing them as a nice-on-the-eye top-flight team. He perhaps should have moved to a Champions League side then. Although he could well still get his chance if he’s able to nurture Newcastle United back into the Champions League, using the resources of their oil-rich Saudi owners.

Current interim Bournemouth manager Gary O’Neil would be at astronomical odds to manage in the Champions League any time soon. Could Steven Gerrard lead Aston Villa into the top four? Four defeats and a draw in seven Premier League games suggest that’s unlikely this season. Cooper’s Nottingham Forest are second-bottom, despite a mammoth summer spending spree.

So that leaves Chelsea’s new manager, at a club which sacks them like it’s a sport all of its own. No pressure, Potter.

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