Alan Curbishley gives his verdict on Lee Bowyer quitting Charlton Athletic for Birmingham City

Alan Curbishley has given his verdict on Lee Bowyer’s Charlton Athletic exit.

The 44-year-old was confirmed as Birmingham City’s new manager earlier this evening.

And Valley legend Curbishley, on punditry duty for Valley Pass for tonight’s 3-2 win over Bristol Rovers, reckons that some people have forgotten some of the huge issues that Bowyer had to cope with prior to Thomas Sandgaard’s takeover in September.

Charlton won promotion to the Championship via the play-offs in 2019 and made a red-hot start to life in the second tier. But East Street Investments’ bungled takeover – which never saw them get EFL approval as well as being placed under a transfer embargo in January 2020 – had a serious impact.

Bowyer also saw Conor Gallagher recalled by Chelsea and sent out to Swansea for the second half of the campaign.

Lyle Taylor also refused to play the run-in when the campaign was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Curbishley said: “I started to come back and watch the games in the Championship. I think we were playing Nottingham Forest and I was sitting with Mick McCarthy, because he’d come to watch Josh Cullen for the Irish side. We played so well in that first half – it was some of the best football I’d seen a Charlton team play. I came out of the ground thinking ‘they’ve got a chance here of the play-offs’. I really did think that.

LEE BOWYER! 🙌

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Lee Bowyer as our Head Coach.

— Birmingham City FC (@BCFC) March 16, 2021

“But the other owners [ESI] took over and there was a bit of a bounce there, and then whatever. The side Bow had – Gallagher in midfield, Taylor up front…it was a really good squad they put together.

“I thought they had a real chance of the Premier League, but it disintegrated with what went on. For Bow to get relegated the last day of the season – when Barnsley win at Brentford to send you down – that’s a big hit.

“Getting relegated as a manager, having to come back in the summer and show enthusiasm when you have a transfer embargo on you – and players leaving the club – I think people forget what he went through the last 18 months, the relegation and the first six months of this year.

“I stil think about where the team is now, and I’m not one of the people criticising where we are. The last couple of months the results haven’t been so good, but that’s only because the expectation levels have gone like that (indicates up).

“You know what? Bow did a good job, he did a good job.”

Bowyer stepped down on Monday morning after nearly three years in charge.

He now has the challenge of keeping Birmingham in the Championship.

Curbishley said: “I was shocked [when he left]. But when something like this happens, there is a lot more gone on than perhaps we learn about and know about.

“I looked from the outside, thinking it looks amicable. There was no ‘if you want to go, we want this – there’s compensation of this’ or ‘we’re going to get lawyers involved’. It seemed as if Bow might have said: ‘There’s interest from another club – and I want to go, or look into it’.

“Maybe Thomas has said: ‘Fine, if you don’t want to be here then fine if you want to move on’.

“Lee’s had to come and talk after the game and the results have not gone that well, but at the start of the season we’d have been begging for the position we’re in – with the owners we had and the embargo. He was getting himself a bit down, but I don’t think he had any intention of leaving. Maybe it’s because it is Birmingham and he feels it is the right time when he came in.”