Kevin Kilbane highlights Graham Potter’s confidence struggles and identifies former team-mate as next Arteta

Former Republic of Ireland international and Premier League stalwart Kevin Kilbane spoke exclusively to Ladbrokes: Fanzone about his memories of Graham Potter at West Brom and Roy Keane’s thoughts on punditry.

But the former Sunderland, Everton, Hull and Wigan player started the interview by talking about Manchester City assistant Enzo Maresca who impressed him during his spell at The Hawthorns.

You can read the first part of his interview in which he talked about the Republic of Ireland by clicking on the link.

Manchester City assistant ‘can be next Mikel Arteta’

Enzo [Maresca] reminds me of Mikel [Arteta], just in his mentality and the way he thinks. Even when we signed him as a young kid at West Brom, he just had this mentality about him, where you just knew he was going to have a career in management. Even when he was 19 at Albion, I can clearly remember thinking that about him.

I think it was Denis Smith who brought him to the club back in 1998, along with Mario Bortolazzi – these two Italian lads came in and brought completely different things to the side. Both in their own way were excellent players, but with Enzo in particular, it was great for him to develop at West Brom and experience English football so early in his career.

He was a brilliant footballer. I think he even went on to win a UEFA Cup with Sevilla later on in his career – he was excellent. After I left Albion, the club sold him to Juventus for around £5million, which was a record for West Brom at the time, and a lot of money back in 2000.

He was excellent, a really top-class player who was great to play alongside and work with. It’s been great to see him develop over the years, and look at where he is now, working under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.

He reminds me of Mikel in his approach. He’s a quietly spoken guy but has always been great to speak to in one-on-one situations and an incredible person to be around. You can see he’s constantly developing as a coach and a manager. The way that he used to address people at West Brom, even at that young age, led me to think we’d eventually see him in the dugout. Now he’s working under one of the best in Pep, and I’m excited to see what his next move will be, because I really think he can go on to be a success as a manager in his own right.

I played with Graham Potter at West Brom… I never saw him getting into management

Graham Potter is another one who was with me at West Brom. It’s amazing when I think back to some of the players I’ve played with over the years who have gone on to some of these massive jobs: Enzo at Man City, Mikel at Arsenal and now Graham at Chelsea.

I didn’t see Graham going on to become Chelsea’s coach when I was with him at West Brom, put it that way! He was very different to the likes of Mikel and Enzo.

He’s a Solihull boy and spent a lot of his playing career in the Midlands. He used to play as a left-back, so he was just behind me, and he had a decent left foot on him, to be fair. He was a decent enough player.

I think I’ve heard him talk about this in the past about suffering with confidence issues, getting his head around stepping up to the next level and dealing with the stick from supporters when he’d had a bad game.

I never saw him being a coach or a manager, I didn’t see it. I know he went away to become a teacher for a while, and while I didn’t exactly keep in touch with him, we’d always connect from time to time.

Then I heard he’d gone out to work in Sweden, and I’ve only ever wished nothing but the best for him in his managerial career. He was a great lad, he was really, really intelligent – a hyperintelligent boy – and he just had that mentality where he wanted to get the best out of himself. I never saw that as him getting into management, though, it was always as if he was striving to become a better person. When you listen to him talk, you can clearly tell that’s the mentality he still has to this day.

Every time you watch Chelsea at the moment, you’re just not getting anything out of that side, and that puts Graham in a really difficult position, despite having only been in charge for a few months.

Roy Keane always said ‘if you ever see me on TV after I’ve retired… shoot me’

I have to be honest, I didn’t actually see Roy Keane getting into punditry. He always used to say “if you ever see me on TV after I’ve retired, you can shoot me”. That was Roy’s opinion of pundits going back 20 years ago.

But times change, and I suppose people mellow when they finish their careers, and it’s a hard transition when players do hang up their boots. Do you go into coaching, do you try punditry, or other aspects of the game? It’s hard in those first few years to get your head around what you’re going to do next.

I think Roy’s done a good job across the board. He certainly did a good job when he was coaching at Sunderland and he had success as Martin O’Neill’s assistant for Ireland – you’ve got to give him that. His coaching career – albeit in its infancy – has been relatively successful.

But as a pundit, as I said, it’s never something I saw him getting into because of what he always used to say about pundits, so it definitely surprised me, especially when you look at how big a role he has for Sky now. I thought he might dip his toes in a little bit, and maybe do the occasional game here and there, but it looks like him and Sky are a great fit. I’ve got to say, to be fair to him, I actually really like him as a pundit. I think pundits should have a strong opinion, because that’s what football is all about.

We’ve seen so many wishy-washy pundits over the years who don’t like to really go out and give their opinion on things, and that’s just not the case whatsoever with Roy. I’m a big fan of him for that reason. He’ll go in with two feet at times but ultimately he speaks from the heart.