Row Z: Potter cries conspiracy, farewell Riza, and the FIFA jamboree on Channel 5

Welcome to Row Z, The Athletic’s weekly column that shines a light on the bonkers side of the game.

From clubs to managers, players to organisations, every Friday we’ll bring you the absurdities, the greed, the contradictions, the preposterousness and the oddities of the game we all love…

The truth? You can’t handle the truth

As if the world wasn’t annoying enough already, embattled West Ham United manager Graham Potter wants us all to lie more.

Last weekend, his team could not beat the side currently enduring the joint-worst season in the 33-year history of the Premier League, drawing 1-1 at home to Southampton. For context, there have been 672 individual team seasons since 1992 and Southampton are =671st, so yeah, that’s pretty bad (West Ham are probably having the most pointless, apathetic Premier League season on record, but let’s park that for now).

Potter wasn’t happy, saying the performance “wasn’t good enough” and “nowhere near what we want to do”.

Striker Niclas Fullkrug went one step further (very tentatively, in case he pulled his dodgy hamstring again), unleashing both barrels on his team-mates, saying: “Very angry today, not disappointed, just angry, on what we did after the (first) goal.

“We didn’t have the ability or the motivation to push up again… but the motivation? Sorry, we were s*** and I’m very angry.”

Lovely stuff.

Having reflected, Potter didn’t like Fullkrug being too honest.

He said at Thursday’s pre-match press conference: “Sometimes I could be honest, how I really feel, but I don’t think it’s helpful to the players. I don’t think it’s helpful to the club. You’ve got a perspective (as a player on the pitch) and this is the great thing about the media — you ask a player after the game and he’ll have his opinion, but it’ll be based on very little.

“The reality of it is you guys aren’t bothered about that. You just want the drama.”

Guys, it’s the media’s fault! What’s happened here is that the Sky Sports interviewer dared to ask Fullkrug: “Why weren’t you able to put the game to bed?”

You just can’t ask questions like that in 2025. It’s sensationalism at its worst. Shame on Sky.

Potter might not like honesty, but he surely can’t argue with facts, as Rafa Benitez might say. Facts like West Ham have gone six games without a win for the first time since February 2024, or West Ham were 14th when Potter took over in January and they’re now 17th.

The truth is a little bit too painful at the moment, it seems.

Omer and out

You may remember Omer Riza being a little bit too honest last week when the then Cardiff City boss said about his team’s supporters: “I read all the comments from fans and, unfortunately, a lot of them are clueless.”

Cardiff unsurprisingly binned Riza off after a 2-0 defeat at Sheffield United last Friday left the Bluebirds deep in the relegation mire. But that wasn’t before Riza endeared himself once more, this time to the media, during his final post-match interview.

Interviewer: “What can you do differently on Monday to get a better result?”

Riza: “Score goals and not concede.”

Interviewer: “Is it as simple as that?”

Riza: “Well, it’s football, isn’t it? You’ve got to score more than the opposition.”

Riza was dismissed by Cardiff City with three games left to play in the Championship (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Interviewer: “How do you go about doing that?”

Riza: “You tell me how I go about doing it. You tell me how I go about doing it.”

Interviewer: “Well, I’m not the manager of Cardiff City, am I?”

Excellent factual response. See, these managers just respond better to facts rather than opinions.

“We’d like to thank Omer for his passion and effort during his time as Cardiff City manager and wish him the very best for his next steps in the game,” Cardiff said in a statement.

Passion is one word for it.

The Chelsea lottery

If you had £354,000 ($471,113) to spend on something every single day for the next 10 years, what would you splash it on?

The possibilities would be endless. You could just buy a property every 24 hours. You could save up and buy a small country if you wanted. Basically, you’d be able to do whatever you wanted for the rest of your life. Amazing.

Alternatively, you could spend it on taking a successful football club and leading it from being Champions League winners to the Conference League, from first place in the Premier League to sixth (via a drop to 12th), from winning four domestic trophies in four years to none in seven seasons.

Never change, Chelsea. Never change.

Thursday nights on Channel 5

The FIFA Club World Cup 2025, a summary…

• A lot of people aren’t aware of its existence
• The competition is trying pretty desperately to be relevant
• It doesn’t have much respect from within the industry
• It can try as hard as it likes and throw all the money in the world at it, but at the end of the day, people probably won’t watch it

The news this week, then, that Channel 5 will broadcast Club World Cup matches in the UK could not have felt more apt.

Social media corner

And we finish this week with more bizarre tweets from official club accounts.

First up, Crystal Palace, who, after drawing 2-2 at Arsenal in midweek, decided this tweet was a good idea: “You’re welcome Liverpool…”

At best, this may have been tongue-in-cheek. At worst, it was just a bit embarrassing and got the deserved treatment from Thomas…

As we discussed in a recent Row Z, Southampton announced the club’s relegation to the Championship like they had low-key claimed a spot in the League One play-offs, saying: “Today’s result confirms our place in the Championship next season.”

It was certainly less emotional than their previous relegated-from-the-Premier-League tweet in 2023: “A heart-breaking moment, as our relegation is confirmed.”

That’s more like it! Emotion, pain, heartache, realism!

Anyway, Leicester City continued the corporate, ignorance-is-bliss theme by also refusing to mention the word relegation, tweeting…

Ipswich Town, we’re watching you closely.

A 1,000-point bonus if you tweet: “OH FFS WE’VE BEEN RELEGATED. ABSOLUTELY GUTTED.”

(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

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