‘Graham Potter got rid of all the leaders at West Ham, then complained about it. How does that make any sense?’ Michail Antonio opens up on his post-accident West Ham rejection
Michail Antonio had admitted that he felt abandoned by West Ham after suffering a devastating car crash in December 2024.
The forward was entering the final months of his contract with the Hammers when he suffered the accident which saw him suffer a gruesome leg break.
The aftermath of the incident saw a complete breakdown in his relationship with West Ham’s then-boss Graham Potter, as Antonio’s ten-year tenure in east London came to an end.
Antonio on his West Ham rejection
Potter had replaced Julen Lopetegui as Hammers boss during Antonio’s recovery, and while he clearly did not see eye to eye with the now-Sweden coach, his first blow came when the club’s former chairman Karren Brady made an initial contract offer.
“Karren Brady told me that she’d offer me a £5,000-a-week contract, but with the under-21s, not the first team,” Antonio tells FourFourTwo. “I said, “How can you offer £5,000 a week and tell me to play for the under-21s, when the under-21s are on more than that and I’ve been at this club for 10 years?” Her response was, “Well, they haven’t been in a car crash and shattered their leg.” I was like, “Oof, OK…” I didn’t sign the contract.”
It was soon clear that Potter did not see the 36-year-old as part of his plans.
“Graham Potter tried to stop me coming to the training ground for the rest of my contract because I made a comment during something I did with TNT, the same comment that I’d been making for years, about how clubs treat players like meat. As soon as a player starts getting stale, the club want to release them. I said that on TNT, went in the next day and Graham pulled me into his office.
“He said, “I think it’s best that you don’t come back in here.” I told him, “Well I will be, because you guys have a duty of care to me and I know I’m allowed to be here, so I’ll see you tomorrow.” It was an argument and, from that day, we never even said hello to each other, and never spoke again.”
With Antonio having played more than 300 times for the club over the past decade, it upset him that Potter viewed him as being negative and not wanting West Ham to succeed.
“Exactly,” he agrees. “I was in there, making jokes with the boys and he could see that. My character is always to try to make people happy. Boys were messaging me when I didn’t have a club, saying, “It would be good for you to be back here.”
“He just had a problem with me, he never actually knew me – he came in after my car crash and during that period I wasn’t really in the club, I was doing rehab in Dubai or Manchester, I might have been at the club maybe once a month for a week, so he never got to know me.”
It is perhaps little surprise that Antonio agrees that Potter was the reason that West Ham were sliding to their eventual relegation.
“Definitely,” he continues. “He made the decision to get rid of all of the senior players. Me, Aaron Cresswell, Vladi Coufal, Edson Alvarez – he got rid of all of the players who were leaders. And then within a month of the season starting, he said, “We’ve got no leaders.” How does that even make any sense? How can you get rid of all the leaders, then go, “We have no leaders in the changing room.” It was your doing!”
Michail Antonio’s autobiography ‘Humans Not Robots’, published by HarperCollins, is available now
