Harry Potts

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harry Potts
Personnel
Surname Harold Potts
birthday October 22, 1920
place of birth Hetton-le-Hole ,  England
date of death January 16, 1996
Place of death Burnley ,  England
position Half-striker
Juniors
Years station
Burnley FC
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1937-1950 Burnley FC 165 (47)
1950-1956 Everton FC 59 (15)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1957-1958 Shrewsbury Town
1958-1970 Burnley FC
1972-1976 Blackpool FC
1977-1979 Burnley FC
1 Only league games are given.

Harold "Harry" Potts (born October 22, 1920 in Hetton-le-Hole , † January 16, 1996 in Burnley ) was an English football player and coach . He is best known as the master coach of Burnley FC from the 1959/60 season , after he had already played for the club shortly after the Second World War.

Athletic career

Player career

Potts grew up in the north-east of England, southwest of Sunderland in Hetton-le-Hole (where Bob Paisley was born) and at the age of 16 he tried to prove his footballing talent with an audition for the second division club Burnley FC . The test match took place against a selection of Blackpool FC and Potts did so well that he was offered a professional contract in November 1937. From then on, it first proved itself in the reserve team and in 1939 the signs were good that he could make it into the first team. As with many footballers of his generation, however, the outbreak of World War II caused a long break in his sports career and he served in the Royal Air Force in India. It was not until 1946 that he returned to Burnley after the fighting ended, and for the next four years he was a regular in the position of the striker. In the 1946/47 season he scored seventeen goals and in addition to promotion to the top division , he moved with the "Weinroten" into the final of the FA Cup , which was lost 1-0 after extra time against Charlton Athletic .

Potts worked well with fellow half-striker Billy Morris , with Morris taking a more offensive approach and Potts placing a greater focus on frontline defense. Already at that time Potts was considered to be the “architect” of the promotion team on the pitch, but at the same time a somewhat questionable reputation preceded him, which implied that he wanted to provoke free kicks and penalties with so-called “ swallows ”. In the following two years or more he was a regular player in the first division, with third place in the 1947/48 season his best placement as a Burnley player. Shortly after the 1949/50 season, in which Potts never missed a game, he moved to Everton in the month of his 30th birthday . A decisive factor in this was that Cliff Britton was now the coach, under whom Potts had previously made his breakthrough in Burnley - the transfer fee was remarkably high at 20,000 pounds for that time.

The transfer didn't pay off for Potts in terms of his own athletic perspective. Although he went straight to the regular formation of the "Toffees", in his second season he found it increasingly difficult to get a place in the team. As a result, he took on coaching duties in Everton's youth division. By the end of the 1955/56 season, he completed only 59 league games in which he scored fifteen goals. He then left Everton and after a year in the coaching staff of Wolverhampton Wanderers , he took his first role as head coach at Shrewsbury Town in the summer of 1957 .

Coaching career

For just 30 games, Potts looked after the "Shrews" before returning to his roots in Burnley. His ex-club had developed very positively during his absence and last took sixth place in the 1957/58 season . With numerous talents from his own youth, Potts turned the team into a top team with "steady hand and tactical finesse", which in the years 1960 to 1963 each finished in the "Top 4" in the league. The sporting highlight was already at the beginning of the 1959/60 season, when Burnley won the English championship. It was noteworthy that, with Alex Elder, only one player was signed before the start of the season and that the title eleven was otherwise made up of established and well-rehearsed forces. Burnley's second championship coach after John Haworth almost won the English championship and FA Cup double two years later, but ultimately only the runner-up title jumped out and Potts' men lost 3-1 in the cup final against Tottenham Hotspur . The departure of players such as Tommy Cummings and Jimmy McIlroy initiated a sporting dent after a third place in 1963, before Potts led his team back to the top region in the 1965/66 season and with third place (and the same number of points as in the championship year 1960 ) celebrated another respectable success. The team around ex-masters like Adam Blacklaw , John Angus , Alex Elder and Brian Miller has meanwhile been supplemented by new talents like Brian O'Neil , Willie Morgan , Willie Irvine and Ralph Coates . Placement in the league entitles them to participate in the trade fair trophy , where with Eintracht Frankfurt a German representative (like six years earlier in the European Cup of the Hamburg SV champions ) was the final destination for Potts. The last years of the 1960s were marked by mediocrity in the first division for Burnley and in February 1970 Potts' first coaching period ended in Burnley. Curiously, Burnley had previously won 5-0 against Nottingham Forest and Potts was promoted to a position as general manager at Burnley . In this role, Potts worked for two years until the summer of 1972 and after a six-month hiatus, he returned to the dugout at the second division club FC Blackpool .

The first competitive game for Potts on Boxing Day took place against Burnley of all places. This was lost with 1: 2, but already with the new edition in the FA Cup he ensured with Blackpool's victory for the dismissal of his ex-player Jimmy Adamson as Burnley's coach. Blackpool, like Burnley, was relegated to the second division in 1971 and the order for Potts was clear with the goal of promotion. He signed good and expensive players like John Evanson , Paul Hart and Wyn Davies , who did not disappoint either, but continued to increase the fans' expectations. Particularly disappointing was the end of the 1973/74 season , when Blackpool under Potts on the last day of the game against Sunderland after a 1-0 lead after 83 minutes lost 2-1 and thus gambled away the promotion. Even in the following two years, the top places remained out of reach, which was mainly due to the low goal count (despite the qualities of a goalscorer like Mickey Walsh in his own ranks). At the end of the 1975/76 season, a faction among the supporters had formed in the club that demanded the expulsion of the coach and after a moderate tenth rank Potts had to leave Blackpool.

At the side of Burnley's new trainer Joe Brown , Potts worked from then on as an assistant. When Burnley was threatened with relegation in the second division with only 15 remaining games, Potts took over the reins of the club again. Relegation was ultimately successful, but there was no improvement in the medium term, largely influenced by numerous player sales such as those of Brian Flynn and Ray Hankin to Leeds United due to financial difficulties. The 1978/79 season brought at least a little reputation with winning the Anglo-Scottish Cup , but further sales of top performers like Tony Morley and Terry Cochrane dramatized the sporting decline. In October 1979 Burnley was bottom of the second division and had not won since Easter 1979, which in turn was the longest run in the club without a win at all. So Potts' coaching career came to a sad end and he should not appear in professional football afterwards. Only in amateur football did he briefly work for the Colne Dynamoes as chief scout . He continued to reside in the Burnley area, where he finally died in January 1996 after a long illness. In his honor, five years after his death, a street near the stadium was renamed Harry Potts Way .

Title / Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Harry Potts, Player Profile" (Clarets Mad)
  2. ^ "Harry Potts, Manager Profile (1)" (Clarets Mad)
  3. ^ Calley, Roy (2011). Blackpool: The Complete Record, 240–240 . Breedon Books Sport.
  4. ^ "Harry Potts, Manager Profile (2)" (Clarets Mad)
personal data
SURNAME Potts, Harry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Potts, Harold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Hetton-le-Hole
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1996
Place of death Burnley