His side were heavily defeated on his return to his previous club Brighton, giving themselves a mountain to climb by going 2-0 down in the first quarter of an hour and 3-0 in arrears just before half-time. Kai Havertz began an attempt at the comeback with a headed goal but it was the Seagulls who completed the scoring for a 4-1 win, their first league success over the Blues.

‘Brighton are a good side, I know that,’ Potter acknowledged after the game.

‘With the crowd and the atmosphere they created, they put us under pressure, we made a couple of unforced errors to start it off a bit but that can happen. I am not going to throw the players under the bus at all, they have been brilliant and given everything to me, but I have to take responsibility and find a way for us to do better.

‘We have had an incredible run of games, six away matches in nine, three wins in the Champions League to qualify. It is not to complain, it is just what we are up against, and we met a really good opponent today.

‘When you lose you have to look at it and if you have made a mistake, you must analyse it. That is part of our job, part of the process, and if we got that wrong I have to take responsibility for that and we have to do better.

‘I have to congratulate Brighton as well,’ he continued. ‘They did what they did well. We had some opportunities ourselves, the scoreline makes it feel a little bit probably worse than it is in terms of we had opportunities, we had touches in the box pretty similar to them. They had a couple of own goals, we had a couple of chances but in the end, we were probably a little but too open and again that's my responsibility.’

The head coach was asked about continuing with Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic in the wide roles they had in the previous game.

‘The responsibility for those two was not to defend against their wing-backs,’ he explained, ‘but I understand whenever you do something and it does not work, you look a bit of fool. That is how it is, I have to accept and deal with that and do better and learn.

‘You need to find a way to win, you need to find a way to perform, we have had a lot of games in October and we've lost some key players in James, Koulibaly, Fofana and Kante. So it's a constant challenge in terms of how to set up. It can be tactical, it can be that the intensity of the opponent who did what they did better. l have to analyse the game and look at how we can improve.’

There was an enforced half-time change with Kepa coming off and Edou Mendy going in goal.

‘He felt the bottom of his foot,’ reported Potter who added that it is too early to know the full extent of the problem. With focus on the Brighton game he had yet to decide if Mendy was going to play in the Champions League game on Wednesday anyway.