Yahoo News Simon Jordan ‘spot on’ as Chelsea clause cited as Leicester City and Graham Potter deal breaker
Simon Jordan has speculated about why Graham Potter may have hesitated over the Leicester City job.
Two candidates were named as nailed-on favourites for the vacant post in quick succession on Wednesday. First, it was former Brighton and Chelsea coach Potter, said to be the frontrunner after positive discussions with the club's hierarchy.
But then The Telegraph reported Steve Cooper's imminent appointment, that now appears most likely.
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Speaking on talkSPORT, Jordan said: "I don’t know whether he (Potter) wanted to ruminate or whether there was a bigger horse trade going on, or whether he’s playing hide and seek with himself. But the culture of certain ownership models are that when they offer you a job and you think you’ve agreed something they expect you to do it.
"Whether he’s sort of fiddle farted about and they’ve gone ‘well, hang on a second we don’t think you’re showing the prerequisite amount of enthusiasm for the job’ and they go with Cooper, or whether we’re working with misinformation that’s not entirely accurate."
He was speaking alongside former Premier League manager Alan Pardew, who posed the question: "The other thing that could be holding this up is just a clause, like a get out clause, a termination clause, a clause for signing players, who knows?"
“Or a mitigation clause because if Chelsea are having to pay him up on his contract and he’s on a million pound a month or whatever obscene figure he’s on for being a bloody football manager there may well be a consequence of taking another job," Jordan replied.
"That consequence may well be that Chelsea get to mitigate some of those costs and all of a sudden the difference between what he’s getting for sitting on his backside and doing nothing against what he’s going to be getting for managing a football team might not be economically as beneficial for him.
"I hope that’s not the reason because that shouldn’t be the reason because you should want to be back in as a football manager."
Pardew labelled his co-pundit "spot on", adding: “I think Simon is probably spot on in terms of you know, what is this relationship with Chelsea still? How does that pan out in terms of his contract situation? It might be complicated beyond our belief. That might be an issue.”
