Huth says sacked Leicester boss Puel "worked against the players"

Claude Puel

Puel was given his marching orders in the wake of a 4-1 Premier League defeat to Crystal Palace, the Foxes' fifth defeat in six league games.

Huth, who played under Puel until announcing his retirement in January, backed the Foxes’ decision to cut ties with a manager he felt was failing to energise his squad.

“I personally found Claude Puel really hard work,” Huth told BBC 5 Live Sport.

“We’ve obviously had managers before who had a really energetic and positive vibe, getting you up for games, and when he came in it was pretty much the opposite.

“We had a group that played high-energy football for 90 minutes and he pretty much changed it. It was almost working against the players in the sense that, you know ‘you guys played like that for three years but I’m going to do it this way’ and that didn’t quite work.

“If things aren’t going well, you need someone to point that out and be brutally honest with the players.

“Quite frankly, I don’t believe he was the guy to do that because if you let the players underperform as they have, you’re setting them up for failure.

“It was mainly down to his assistants, the staff that were there before; they set the tone and tried to get the players up for games. He didn’t really do it when I was there – it was always up to the backroom staff.”

Alasdair Mackenzie is a freelance journalist based in Rome, and a FourFourTwo contributor since 2015. When not pulling on the FFT shirt, he can be found at Reuters, The Times and the i. An Italophile since growing up on a diet of Football Italia on Channel 4, he now counts himself among thousands of fans sharing a passion for Ross County and Lazio.