Chris Powell looked forward to his big return to Charlton Athletic on Saturday and said: “They will always be a special club to me, but I am at a special club now.”
Huddersfield Town’s boss made 270 appearances in three separate spells as a Charlton player and managed them between January 2011 and last March.
He won promotion to the Premier League as a left-back in 2000 and led the Addicks to the League I title in 2012, making him equally popular as a manager.
Powell also guided Charlton to last season’s FA Cup quarter-finals before being shown the door by the recently-arrived Belgian owner Roland Duchatelet.
The billionaire has dispensed with two other team chiefs since, and Powell, who will be making his first return to The Valley, insisted: “I’ll be firmly focused on the match.
“Of course it will be a little bit poignant, and I will be saying a few hellos, but I badly want to get three points, and I won’t let anything get in the way of trying to win the game.”
With admission £5 in all areas of the ground, a bumper 24,000-plus crowd is expected, and Powell added: “It’s quite an offer and should make for a great atmosphere.
“We will have a lot of fans there as well, and we’re going into it on the back on an excellent win over Reading on Tuesday.”
On the Charlton takeover which preceded his exit, Powell said: “It was something the club felt they needed to do. The owner has his own ideas of how to run Charlton and his other clubs (Belgium’s Standard Liege, Germany’s Carl Zeiss Jena and Spain’s Ad Alcorcon).
“I’m proud that myself and my staff (including Town assistant manager Alex Dyer) rebuilt the club to be at least Championship standard.
“It was always going to be a number of years before getting near to former glories of the Premier League.
“But the first step was getting out of League I and we managed that.
“It was a great club for me, but things have changed there and I have moved on.”
