by Staff Writer
Sunday, 17th August 2025
Graham Potter accused his team of failing to "do the basics" as he watched his side open their 2025/26 Premier League campaign in the worst possible fashion.
Comfortably beaten 3-0 by newly-promoted Sunderland, the Head Coach had nowhere to hide after the match when addressing the media. And he felt the second half performance - which have been so strong during pre-season - was particularly costly.
"The result is obviously bad for us and the second half was really disappointing," he began. "In the first half, I thought we were good. I thought we did lots well in terms of quietening the crowd down and creating some opportunities. We could have scored, I thought, but nevertheless, we felt OK.
"We started a bit slow in the second half and from out of nowhere a goal goes in. It was a game where probably the first goal, especially here with the environment, was going to be challenging for us.
"In trying to push [for an equaliser] we opened ourselves up. The second goal’s a poor one - a mistake leads to a cheap set-piece and then we didn’t do the basics well enough in the second phase.
"We haven’t done the basics well enough, it’s as simple as that. We have to improve that. There wasn’t too much to like about that second half from our perspective."
And Potter believes the result will act as a harsh reminder to his squad that In order to be successful at Premier League level, the quality - and attitude of the players - has to be much, much better.
"We have to learn this painful lesson because if you don’t, you can talk about how well you play, or about attacking football or whatever, but ultimately it doesn’t matter," he added. "If you don’t do the basics well then it’s hard to win games, so we have to really improve that."
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