adminGary Rowett has revealed he found standards had slipped at Leicester City when he took over last season, with the former Foxes boss admitting there were “other reasons” why a squad with so much quality was fighting relegation.
The Foxes finished 23rd in the Championship last term after having six points deducted for breaching PSR rules. Before a ball was kicked, City were tipped to make an instant return to the Premier League under Marti Cifuentes, who was sacked in January.
Rowett was appointed as his replacement in February and lost just four games in charge. However, only one win was recorded before their relegation to the third tier was confirmed at the end of April.
City opted against handing Rowett a new contract and Russell Martin came in over the summer. In League One, the Foxes are sitting 14th after seven games.
Rowett has spent the first part of the season doing punditry work with Sky Sports and, this week, appeared on talkSPORT alongside Jim White and Simon Jordan. Speaking as a guest, the former Foxes boss discussed taking the job at the King Power Stadium and what went wrong.
He said: “It’s interesting because a lot of people have said to me, ‘why on earth would you take that job?’ It’s a short term job, there’s no real ambition from my perspective long-term, because it was always to the end of the season.
“I think you get to a stage, I’ve done 600-odd games now, you just take the ones that you fancy. I got offered a Championship job permanently about a week before that I turned down [because] it wasn’t something that really made me desperate to get into management.
“It was one [where] I knew the club and knew a few people at the club, it felt like a good opportunity, short term, to go in and have a crack at it. I knew the challenges, I think you always know the challenges when a team with what perceived to be that much quality in the squad is down there, there’s got to be other reasons that they’re there.
“It’s always the same, you often find [that] culturally, things have slipped and are not quite where you’d want them to be. Different managers have tried different ways of doing it and not quite managed to get success. I found a group of players that tried their best to perform, I think they did perform, but it just lacked certain characteristics when you’re down there.”
Rowett also revealed that communication with City owner Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha was limited, something that he claims is often the case in today’s game.
“One thing I found from an ownership perspective is that you didn’t really talk to the owner much,” he added.
“I’ve found that a lot recently with a lot of the clubs that I’ve been at. Actually, some of the more enjoyable jobs have been where you’ve actually had some sort of relationship and conversation with the owner and you can understand what it is that they’re trying to achieve.
“Whereas nowadays, you very rarely speak to the owners and sometimes that makes it difficult because messages get mixed.”
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