When a team starts losing one game after the other, the first person I look at is the coach. If this is a big team that has spent money on players and we know that these players are not very bad then we have to blame the coach. It is the job of the coach to make sure players play well. It is their job to make sure these players play the way he wants.
I'm not putting all the blame on the coach, didn't get me wrong, but the responsibility of that team lies in the coach. In the case of Chelsea, I'm very certain a bad coach was their problem. Chelsea couldn't win teams in the relegation zone and below mid-table teams, that tells you a lit. They also couldn't create enough chances (I know they didn't have the right midfield ) and they couldn't score goals.
Despite not having good goal scores and creators on their team last season, they should have done way better if they had a better coach.
What do you think about Jurgen Klopp when he was 26 points behind Arsenal London? Does that make him a bad coach with the players he has at hand?
Not let me clear here that we agree on Potter being the wrong coach for Chelsea. I think everyone agrees and there is little to no doubt that he wasn't the right choice. But in some situations sometimes even a great coach can't change it all. In the case of Klopp it was a question of time and they kind of recovered, even though not fully and only made it into the Europa League. But Chelsea was so bad that I think players should also take responsibility and take some of the blame. Even when my coach is bad I can still try to fight on the field. But they often didn't.