Gary Rowett and his “incredible” right hand guy are back together at Birmingham City.

Gary Rowett, Birmingham City’s temporary manager, will return to lead the Blues for the final eight games of current season.

Gary Rowett is back with a man he regards as ‘simply exceptional’ in his line of work after helping Birmingham City through these last eight games of yet another difficult Championship season. Rowett originally started working with Joe Carnall in late 2014, during his first stint as Blues’ manager.

Then, Carnall, who was in his second tenure at Blues after leaving as head of performance analysis to briefly join Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest before coming back to St Andrew’s just before Rowett was appointed, had assumed his previous position. He outlasted Rowett, who was fired in December 2016, but departed Blues in early 2017 to rejoin him at Derby County.

In 2019, Carnall moved on from Rowett to Stoke City and then Millwall. He served as the first team’s technical coach until the summer of 2022, at which point he made the decision to resign in light of his young family and the demanding commute from the Midlands to the city. Perhaps grudgingly, given their collaborative rapport, Rowett did authorize Carnall’s departure.

The strange thing about football is that last year, Craig Gardner welcomed Carnall and Frank McParland back to the team as the Blues looked to improve their recruiting department in an effort to expand their reach. Carnall returned to the team in February of last year, this time as head scout. In order to fill Tony Mowbray’s void, Rowett, who left Millwall earlier in the season with the consent of all parties, has now returned to Blues via the well-traveled route.

It’s a reunion between the manager and a man he has spoken highly of in the past, and it’s obvious that Blues should value Rowett’s work, even though his time back at the club will be limited and may not necessarily overlap with Carnall’s as he gets ready for the summer transfer window.

“He is someone I’ve trusted for a long, long time,” Rowett told the South London Press of Carnall’s departure from Millwall last year. “I’ve been flat-mates with him for the last three years. He had a little boy, Charlie, a couple of years ago and as soon as him and Soph had him I thought ‘this could be tough now’ because he is travelling away from a young family. He has managed really well with it, but at some point I knew he’d want to be back home.

“He’s someone I’m going to miss incredibly, both as a friend and as a member of staff, because he is brilliant at what he does. That’s why we’ve worked together so well and for so long. I can ask him to do something and it is done exactly how I envisaged it would be done.

“I spent three months with Joe out of work [after leaving Stoke] and we worked on the principles of how we were going to play, were we going to play a back five? If so, what would that look like? What do the training sessions look like? We have spent so much time together working on these things. He was my running partner and got my times a lot lower because I was having to keep up with him. Now you’ll see a sad, old manager running the streets by himself.