Charlton Athletic manager Lee Bowyer has opened up about his decision to sign a new contract with the club, admitting that he never wanted to leave.

Bowyer signed a new one-year contract at The Valley last month, less than a day after the club announced that they were unable to agree a new deal.

Charlton released a statement on their club website saying that they were unable to reach an agreement with Bowyer over a new contract, due to his wage demands and him wanting a long-term deal.

The club left the door open for Bowyer to continue as manager and the following day they announced that he had signed a one-year contract extension.

Bowyer was able to guide Charlton to promotion to the Championship in his first full season as a manager last term, as his side beat Sunderland 2-1 in the League One play-off final at Wembley.

The Charlton boss has now admitted that he never wanted to leave the club and that he was always confident that he would be able to reach an agreement with the club's owner.

"I said from the beginning I wanted to stay," Bowyer told Charlton's official club website.

"I think everybody knows that I’m a laid back person and I say it how it is. For me everybody seemed to be more worried about what was going to happen than I was.

"I believed from the beginning that we were going to agree and obviously negotiations, it is what it is. The club want to get you for as cheap as possible and I wanted to be paid fairly for what myself and the team had done.

"We’ve come to a fair agreement and I’m happy, the owner is happy. We’ve got a good group here. The owner said: ‘We have to keep this group together’. So I’m happy with that.

"I’m over the moon, he’s backed us in the market already, we’ve spent a bit of money, which for someone who wants to sell the club is good to see."

Bowyer first took charge of Charlton as caretaker manager in March 2018 and was able to guide the team to the League One play-off semi-finals.

He agreed to remain in charge at the start of last season, signing a contract as the club's new permanent manager until the end of the campaign.

The Verdict

To be fair to Bowyer, you can't fault his honesty here.

It seems as though both Charlton and Bowyer himself always wanted him to remain at the club, but he obviously felt that what they were offering was not good enough.

It seems as though they were able to reach some sort of compromise and that has to be considered a major boost for Charlton, as he did a fantastic job with them last season.

I'm sure Charlton fans will be delighted that he was able to reach an agreement with the club to stay and will be hoping to see him achieve more success at The Valley in the Championship next season.