Andre Breitenreiter: Huddersfield boss may have turned down job

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.”