Andre Breitenreiter says that he may not have accepted the Huddersfield Town job if he had known about all the “problems” at the club.
Breitenreiter arrived in February as the third permanent manager of the season after Neil Warnock and Darren Moore.
But with just two wins from the German’s 12 games, the Terriers are all but relegated ahead of their final game at Ipswich Town on Saturday (12:30 BST).
“I decided to sign for Huddersfield, but when I have known about all the things and problems in the team, maybe I would have decided in another way,” said Breitenreiter.
Having kept the club up with one match to spare last season, Warnock left his position in September.
But his replacement, Moore, only lasted four months after overseeing just three league wins in his 22 games.
Breitenreiter was appointed on the back of his pedigree in German and Swiss football, having won the title with FC Zurich in 2021-22.
Huddersfield owner Kevin Nagle talked of the German bringing a “winning culture”, but the 50-year-old admits he has struggled to implement that at the John Smith’s Stadium.
Town would need to win at Ipswich, hope Birmingham City draw and Plymouth Argyle lose with a 15-goal swing to survive, and Breitenreiter accepts his side are destined for League One football for the first time since 2012.
‘Too much focus on golf’
Breitenreiter is fiercely critical of last summer’s pre-season under Warnock, which he believes has left the squad not sharp enough for the rigours of a 46-game Championship campaign.
He cited defenders Yuta Nakayama and Radinio Balker and striker Danny Ward as key players who have missed too much football due to injury.
“I knew about the fitness problem,” he told BBC Radio Leeds.
“I heard about the really poor pre-season where players trained once a day and the focus was on playing golf and maybe staying in the pub.
“This never leads to success.
“They did not train enough to be able to play over 90 minutes – this is what I heard from many, many people around the club.”
Breitenreiter also believes the squad has been afflicted by too many cliques, and regrets he did not try to tackle the issue sooner into his reign.
“When I was a player and a manager, to be successful, you need one team,” he said. “This is the biggest problem – there is no one group. This is clear.
“There are many problems in the team and they do not accept each other. With the knowledge I have today, maybe I was too calm for a long time.
“It’s always important in a relegation battle to be calm and that people believe in you and trust you.
“Then it was maybe not the right moment to take hard decisions but I realised very early the big problems in the team.”
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