Mention ‘Chelsea manager Bruno Saltor’ to a lot of people and they’ll wonder what on earth you’re talking about. Perhaps there a Chelsea in South America? Maybe he managed the youth team? It is more likely that Brighton & Hove Albion supporters will know who you’re talking about than Chelsea fans and even then they’re unlikely to recollect him working as a manager. That is because Saltor was an assistant manager at Stamford Bridge for a year, taking charge of the club on a caretaker basis for one match after Graham Potter’s dismissal, briefly holding the fort until Frank Lampard came on board as interim manager.
Saltor the Right-Back
Bruno Saltor Grau was born in the Spanish municipality of El Masnou on the first of October 1980. Given his birthplace of Barcelona, it is perhaps no surprise that the Catalonian joined the youth system of RCD Espanyol. He struggled to make any sport of impact on the first-team, however, making just one appearance for them when he played the final eight minutes of a 3-1 win at home over Rayo Vallecano. Instead, he was mainly used in the B-team, spending three of his four years in the Segunda División B and making 72 league appearances, scoring six goals. He remained in the local region by playing for Gimnàstic de Tarragona on loan and UE Lleida.
At that point, it was clear that he was going to struggle to make an impact in Catalonia. In the summer of 2006 he moved to Andalusia and was an important part of UD Almería’s promotion to La Liga. He missed just four league games in the 2007-2008 campaign, with the team finishing in eighth. From there he moved to Valencia CF when former Almería manager Unai Emery signed him. He played 59 league games across three years before Brighton & Hove Albion signed him in 2012 as a free agent. It was at Brighton where he really settled, playing 225 times and scoring six goals between 2012 and 2019, with injury eventually forcing his retirement.
Moving Into Coaching
Having suffered a hamstring injury in the opening match of the 2018-2019 campaign, Saltor, often referred to simple as ‘Bruno’, struggled to get into the Brighton team on a regular basis. Though he helped the club to avoid relegation and make it to the semi-final of the FA Cup, it was clear that the writing was on the wall for the Spaniard. He confirmed on the tenth of May 2019 that he would be retiring at the end of the season, giving a post-match speech in which he said, “Once a seagull, always a seagull”. The club returned the compliment, giving him a position as the Senior Player Development Coach.
That job was offered and taken up in the June of 2019, with Graham Potter liking what it was that Saltor was doing. Potter liked it so much, in fact, that when he was offered the manager’s job at Chelsea by the club’s new owner, Todd Boehly, he wanted Saltor to go with him. By that stage he was considered to be a first-team coach, with Brighton mentioning him personally in their announcement confirming Potter’s departure. Both the club’s Chairman Tony Bloom and the Deputy Chairman Paul Barber specifically mentioned ‘Bruno’ for thanks when they commented on the managerial situation, showing how much he was liked.
Saltor at Chelsea
When Graham Potter was appointed as the Chelsea manager, taking over from Champions League winner Thomas Tuchel, the then-47-year-old decided to take some of his most trusted advisors with him to Stamford Bridge. Billy Reid, his assistant, along with Bjorn Hamberg and Bruno, who were both first-team coaches, all signed up to work with him at Chelsea. He also took the Goalkeeping Coach Ben Roberts and the Assistant Head of Recruitment Kyle Macaulay to the Blues, with Chelsea having to pay around £21 million in compensation in order to allow of them to become the club’s new backroom staff.
Things didn’t go well for Potter, of course. Although the club qualified for the quarter-final of the Champions League under his management, 11 losses in 31 games proved too much for Boehly and he was given the bullet on the second of April 2023. In his place, Bruno Saltor was given the job on a caretaker basis, with Chelsea looking for someone else to take on the role more permanently. That would eventually be Frank Lampard, but it was Saltor who was in charge for the visit of Liverpool with ten games of the season remaining, with both clubs struggling for any sort of form as the season drew to a close.
That was reflected in the match, which was a dour 0-0 affair that came on the back of a heavy defeat for Liverpool against Manchester City. It was the home side that had the better chances, included a goal that the Video Assistant Referee ruled out for handball. The Merseyside club was chasing a top four finish that they ultimately missed out on, whilst Chelsea were simply hoping to improve on their poor season up to that point. Liverpool had beaten Manchester United 7-0 before losing three games in succession, with Chelsea having lost 2-0 to Aston Villa in the league. Saltor did fine, but not well enough for Boehly to consider offering him the role on a more permanent basis.