Rowett was surprisingly sacked by Birmingham City despite seemingly doing a very good job.
Lukas Jutkiewicz has suggested that Birmingham City’s players were left shocked when they found out that Gary Rowett was sacked by the club last week, and insisted that they had no idea that the change was coming, the Birmingham Mail reports.
Rowett’s departure was met with a sizeable amount of uproar from the rest of the football world given the job that he had done at St Andrew’s to move the Blues into the play-off picture last season and keep them there this term, too.
Birmingham manager Gary Rowett
And Jutkiewicz – who is on loan at Birmingham from Premier League side Burnley – has explained how the players found out about the news before outlining the mood amongst the squad.
“Shocked is probably the right word because nobody had heard any whispers or anything like that,” he said, as reported by the Mail.
“We had come in on the Wednesday morning for a warm-down after a hard fought victory over Ipswich and it’s kind of the last thing anyone even expected.
“We were told to wait around after training for a meeting, we had no clue – we certainly didn’t think it was going to be that.”
Birmingham manager Gianfranco Zola
Though Birmingham lost their first game under new boss Gianfranco Zola, there is no way that anyone could argue that the players were not able to put the situation with their former manager behind them and give everything to try and secure the three points.
It was the Blues who took the lead against automatic-promotion candidates Brighton thanks to Jutkiewicz’s brilliantly guided header, before two late goals turned the game around.
And while many of the supporters were disappointed to see Rowett go, they will be hoping that Zola’s men are able to move on from the recent events and concentrate on a push for a top six spot.
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