So on Sunday morning he texted Preston manager Peter Ridsdale and asked to meet him. To drop the explosive news that he wanted to leave. “He wanted me to stay,” Lowe says. “The president (Craig Hemmings) came over and I just said, ‘I think I’ve taken you as far as I can.’

“I have always said, and I stand by my word, that whatever club I am at, if I feel like that, I will not hang around and get my money back. I will never fall out with my owner, my CEO, my sports director…

“When I left the training ground, I felt relieved. I had this weight on my shoulders that I couldn’t get rid of. I always felt that if I wasn’t the right one, if I wasn’t feeling the vibe, then I was doing just fine with my instincts.

“It’s something very important to me. I’ve been on the sideline many times and thought, ‘I have to get this player out quickly; I need to change shape quickly,” I did and it worked.

“So I listen to my instincts. At the time, I didn’t talk to anyone except my wife. If you feel like it’s going to make you sick and you don’t think it’s going to be worth it and you don’t enjoy it, then what’s the point?

“And I always said that if I had pushed a club as far as I could and I wasn’t enjoying it, I would say: ‘alright, shake hands, let’s go’. And that’s what that I did.

But a game? As always, it’s not that simple. There was a story; there was history.

The most fundamental criterion for success in football is exceeding a club’s budget. Lowe undoubtedly did so during his managerial career: at Plymouth Argyle, their wage bill would have put them 10th in League One – they were fourth when he left; at Preston they should have been 14th in the league but 13th, then they should have been 19th but 12th, and in his last campaign they should have been 20th but 10th.

Hemmings’ statement clearly hurts

“It will be hard to top what I have done in my two and a half years at the club,” Lowe said. He wishes Preston and his successor, Paul Heckingbottom, the best. “Hecky called me and asked, ‘What was the problem?’ And I said, ‘There’s no problem. Great club, great bunch of guys, they just need a new voice.’ And they got it,” says Lowe.

Last season ended with a difficult run of five consecutive defeats and a statement from Hemmings that it was “totally unacceptable” even though Preston finished 10th. Lowe doesn’t say it but it clearly hurts.

He naturally felt like he was overachieving and that had to be taken into account. Perhaps expectations had been too high and he was a victim of his own success?

“I was disappointed by that statement, but the facts were the facts,” Lowe said. “I could have easily said, ‘It’s over,’ but we saw the end of the season and it was difficult. Have I considered going to talk to Peter at the end of the season? Yes. But what happened next was it had a snowball effect.

When the news broke, it was initially assumed, due to timing, that Lowe had been fired. But it quickly turned out that he had indeed asked to leave, that he was genuine and that there was no other agenda.

He wanted to be true to Preston and true to himself and, after a vacation, prepared himself to be ready when the next opportunity presented itself.

But first something else had to happen. “I was invited to watch Plymouth Argyle at Burnley by Neil Dewsnip, the director of football, and he said: ‘you should be proud because you started this journey‘. And I thought, “That’s the first time I’ve heard that.” And it made me realize that I had done a good job wherever I was and it helped me get my momentum back.