Charlton Athletic will forever curse their luck with £3.5m Leicester City transfer | OneFootball

When Charlton Athletic paid Leicester £3.5 million for Gary Rowett in 2002, nobody knew they'd only get 13 games out of this very talented defender.

Charlton Athletic thought they'd landed the experienced Premier League defender they needed in 2002, and they had, but only for 13 games.

By the summer of 2002, Charlton Athletic were settling nicely back into life in the Premier League.

They'd been back in the top-flight for two years, and although their second season back had ended with them finishing lower than their first -14th vs ninth - they hadn't been in serious danger of relegation and were ready to go again.

Other clubs, however, hadn't been as fortunate, and Leicester City were among them. They'd been relegated in bottom place in the Premier League, and needed a clear-out.

One of their available players was a talented yet dependable central defender with a decade's worth of experience across the Premier League and all three divisions of the EFL.

Addicks manager Alan Curbishley had been interested in Gary Rowett for a couple of years. He'd tried to take Rowett to Charlton from Birmingham City in 2000, but the player chose Leicester instead because it was closer to home.

But two years later the sale was agreed as Leicester fell from the Premier League. £3.5 million was a lot of money for a club with a limited budget, but Charlton reckoned that they were getting a lot of defender for it.

Gary Rowett's knee problems were a known issue before he signed for Charlton

Rowett made his debut for Charlton at home to Chelsea on the opening weekend of the 2002-03 season, a match which Chelsea won 3-2.

The following week, he returned for the last six minutes of their first win of the season, 2-1 away to Bolton Wanderers. But then he was missing for two months.

Rowett had known for some time that there could be a problem with his knee. Talking to London News Online in 2019, he said: "In my second season at Leicester I got injured.

"Charlton actually tried to sign me again, I came down to meet them. They wanted to sign me regardless of my injury but I said: ‘Look, it isn’t the right thing to do – I don’t want to come down here injured. I want to come down fully fit and be fair to the club and myself’."

The knee injury that had laid him low at Leicester had cleared up, but a new one presented itself shortly after his arrival at The Valley.

He returned to the team at the end of October, with Curbishley having made him captain, but after a further ten appearances his knee flared up again, and this time he needed surgery.

He didn't play for them again that season. Charlton finished 2002-03 in 12th place in the Premier League.

A call from Nigel Clough brought the swansong for Gary Rowett's playing career and the start of his managerial career

Rowett was available for the first game of the 2003-04 at home to Manchester City, but City won 3-0 and his knee was causing him issues again.

And this time there was no way back. Rowett missed the remainder of the 2003-04 season with the knee injury, and at the end of the season he was released by Charlton, confirming his retirement from playing at just 30 years old.

This didn't turn out to be quite the end of Gary Rowett's playing career. In 2005, Burton Albion manager Nigel Clough persuaded him out of retirement to play for his club in the Football Conference - now the National League - and he made 43 League appearances for them before retiring from playing for good in 2007.

Burton would turn out to have far greater significance to Gary Rowett as a manager than as a player. In 2009, he returned to the club as assistant to their new manager Paul Peschisolido, and in 2012 he was appointed as their manager.

From there on, he's gone on to have a stellar managerial career, with spells at Birmingham City, Stoke City, Derby County and Millwall, before arriving at Oxford United in December 2024.

Having kept them in the Championship at the end of the 2024-25 season, he's now established a reputation for himself as being a highly talented EFL manager.

The end of Rowett's playing career was bad luck for all involved. The player himself was just 28 when he arrived at The Valley, and the knee problems that would end up costing him his playing career were different to the ones that he'd been aware of before he signed for Charlton.

And Charlton had been interested in him for a while, but couldn't have been aware that problems were already storing up that would hit him so badly.

In the end, Rowett cost them £3.5 million for 13 Premier League appearances. It wasn't his fault, but you can imagine them cursing the bad luck which saw them get so little for such a vast financial outlay.