‘KEEP THE MAJORITY AND YOU’LL BE FLYING’
GARY Rowett says the success of Leicester, Southampton and Leeds this season should serve as a blueprint to any club relegated from the Premier League.
All three are on course to make an immediate return to the top flight, with Enzo Maresca’s Foxes soaring clear at the Championship summit and the other two embroiled in a three-way fight for second with surprise-package Ipswich.
Rowett has first-hand experience of the difficulties a relegated club can face having taken charge of Stoke in the summer of 2018.
He lasted just six months before being sacked, and the Potters have since stagnated in the second tier, failing to register a single tophalf finish in five attempts.
“There are a lot of challenges that people don’t see, and that as a manager you can never really talk about,” says Rowett.
“When I was at Stoke, for example, it was an ageing Premier League team. A lot of them didn’t want to be there. The agents are quite powerful as well, and they don’t want their clients playing in the Championship.
“People want to leave, there’s endless speculation. You never really feel like your team is settled. You’ve got to navigate all of these things, particularly in that period up until the window ends, and people at a relegated club don’t want to hear it. You just have to sort of sit there and act like everything is fine.
“It’s challenging, and I probably learned more in that first month at Stoke than I did in the entirety of any other job.
“What those three have done is keep the majority of their best players. And they’ve not just kept them, they’ve also got them onside and playing to the level which is the hardest part of all.
“What it shows is very good management from all three managers, and the importance of signing young players who are more amenable to that drop.
“Ipswich under Kieran McKenna have been absolutely incredible and if they do fall away then it would be very sad if anyone saw that as a negative. He’s probably had to work harder than any of the other teams to be there.
“But I think you could see pretty much from the start that Leicester, Southampton and Leeds would battle it out for automatic promotion.”