Andre Breitenreiter has said he might not have taken the Huddersfield Town job if he had known about all the “problems” at the club.
Breitenreiter was appointed in February as the third permanent manager this season, following Neil Warnock and Darren Moore.
However, the German's just two wins from 12 games meant the Terriers were all but relegated ahead of Saturday's final game at Ipswich Town.
“I decided to sign for Huddersfield, but if I had known everything about the team and the problems, I probably would have decided differently,” Breitenreiter said.
Warnock left his role in September after keeping the club in good form with one game remaining last season.
However, his successor, Moore, lasted just four months, managing just three league wins in 22 games.
Breitenreiter was appointed due to his background in German and Swiss football, where he won the title with FC Zurich in the 2021-22 season.
Huddersfield owner Kevin Nagle said the German brought a “winning culture” but admitted the 50-year-old struggled to implement that at the John Smith Stadium.
Town need a win at Ipswich and hope Birmingham City draw and Plymouth Argyle concede 15 goals to survive, but Breitenreiter believes the team are destined to qualify for League One for the first time since 2012. I accept that there is.
“I'm too focused on golf.”
Breitenreiter has been highly critical of last summer's pre-season under Warnock, believing it left the team not sharp enough to withstand the rigors of a 46-game Championship campaign.
He named defenders Yuta Nakayama and Ladinio Barker and striker Danny Ward as key players who have missed too much football due to injury.
“I knew about the fitness issues,” he told BBC Radio Leeds.
“I heard about a really bad pre-season where the emphasis was on players practicing once a day and playing golf or staying in pubs.
“This will never lead to success.
“They weren't training well enough to play more than 90 minutes. That's what I heard from so many people around the club.”
Breitenreiter also believes the team is plagued by too many factions and has stated that he regrets not addressing the issue earlier in his reign.
“When I was a player and a coach, it took a team to be successful,” he said. “That's the biggest problem – there's no single group, that's clear.
“The team has a lot of problems and we don't accept each other. With today's knowledge, maybe I was too calm for too long.
“In a relegation battle it's always important to be calm and for people to believe in you and have faith in you.
“Then it may not have been the right time to make difficult decisions, but I realized very early on a big problem within the team.”
“You can't work with eight players.”
Breitenreiter criticized some of his team immediately after Saturday's 1-1 draw with Birmingham City, a game that effectively sealed their fate.
And he doubled down on that criticism.
“When we played as a team, we always collected points. It was possible to stay in the league and it wasn't that difficult,” he said.
“But as[Liverpool manager]Jurgen Klopp said a few weeks ago, unless you're Lionel Messi, you have to defend and you have to work for the team.
“We don't have a player with 30 goals and 30 assists. If you don't have a goal or an assist in the last 15 games, you should be running for your life for your guys.”
“There were also players who didn't perform decisively in the last game.
“When you're at Huddersfield Town, you can't work with eight players to stay in the league. Then you don't deserve it.”
“That's the biggest problem and we haven't been able to address it.”
