As an avid reader who counts Dean Karnazes’ Ultramarathon Man among his favourite books, it seems fitting that Gary Rowett should be the man helping Birmingham City keep right on to the end of the road.
The former Burton Albion manager has led Birmingham into a U-turn since taking over from Lee Clark in October, transforming a team who had won twice in 16 games into one with only two defeats from 13. And, as a popular former player at St Andrew’s, Rowett knows all about the club’s theme of not giving up until the very last.
The latest mission for Birmingham is to carry league form into the FA Cup on Saturday and the “friendly” fourth-round derby with West Bromwich Albion.
Birmingham traditionally hate Aston Villa, West Brom loathe Wolverhampton Wanderers, so this one ought not to have the same edge. But Rowett will again challenge his players to surpass themselves.
The 40-year-old is focused on the task in hand although he admits that in his downtime he likes to indulge in some healthy escapism that, back in the heat of battle, inspires him.
“Every time I go away in the summer, I take a couple of books with me,” Rowett said. “Business books, psychology books, autobiographies, classics … I just like learning. That was one of the factors in becoming a manager, I’ve always wanted to learn and to try to better myself.
“One of my favourite books is Ultramarathon Man, by Dean Karnazes, which inspired me to run a bit more, but also examines the trials of endurance and how people can do so much more than they believe they can do.”
It sounds like a message the Birmingham players have bought into in the past three months. Rowett’s arrival, on the back of an 8-0 home defeat by Bournemouth, gave him plenty of scope for improvement. He has brought in the underdog mentality that was forged at the start of his playing days under John Beck at Cambridge United and extended in leading Burton to successive play-off appearances with one of the smallest budgets in League Two.
He finished his playing days at Burton, where Nigel Clough’s team held Manchester United to a goalless draw in this competition nine years ago, and his managerial spell at the Pirelli Stadium, where he worked with a handshake for a contract, by knocking Premier League Queens Park Rangers out of the Capital One Cup.
“I’ve seen plenty of cup upsets, we had a few at Burton,” Rowett said, in a joint interview with Fanbookz and the Guardian. “This is a slightly different scenario, Championship versus Premier League. But I have got that mentality to a certain extent. I’ll always feel as a manager that we’re the underdogs because there always has to be a will to fight, that drive to be better.
“We’re at a stage at Birmingham where we’re not going to have the same budget as other Championship clubs so we have to battle, and that has helped drive us up the table. We’ve seen it on the other foot when we saw what Blyth Spartans almost achieved against us in the last round.”
Coming back from 2-0 down away to Evo-Stik Northern Premier League opponents showed Birmingham’s rediscovered resolve and the former Derby County and Everton full-back does not believe beating West Brom on Saturday should be a shock. “If Birmingham beat West Brom, it shouldn’t be a huge upset,” he said. “Look at the size of both clubs, look at the current form of both teams, even though West Brom were always going to pick up under Tony Pulis. I think he’s a fantastic manager. When you look at his philosophy and how he does things, he does it properly, and you know we’re going to be in a for a tough ride because Tony has such a winning mentality.”
The two managers share the basic tenet of rebooting a team’s fortunes by building from the back. Rowett said after his first game, a sturdy goalless draw at Wolves, that he “intended to kill football all the way to the end of the season”.
“Substance has to come before style, you have to make yourself difficult to beat,” he said. “If you look at the majority of the games after Wolves, we have grown as a team. We’ve passed the ball better, we’ve counterattacked better and though we didn’t play that well [in drawing 1-1] at Leeds on Saturday, we had 18 shots. So we’re creating chances while denying the opposition chances, which is a good start.”
Any interview about this once proud club, who won the League Cup only four years ago, has to reference the continuing saga of Carson Yeung’s alleged control of the club from a Hong Kong jail. Rowett was able to sign Lloyd Dyer on loan from Watford this week despite competition from four other Championship clubs.
“The club have backed us, bringing in Lloyd Dyer,” Rowett said. “I’ll always try to do [squad building] in a reasonable way anyway.
“I don’t know what’s down the line, what could potentially change, but at the moment I’m quite happy with how things are. I’ve certainly been encouraged by a really promising start.”
