We take a look on how the first 3 months have been for Brøndby's new manager, as the club gets ready to kick off their first season und...
We take a look on how the first 3 months have been for Brøndby's new manager, as the club gets ready to kick off their first season under their new manager. The pre season has been really short, due to the club playing in the first qualifying round in Europa League.
If you want to read the introduction of this story, click here. If you want to read my guide about the club, press here.
June and July
So, normally a pre-season last a couple of weeks, playing againt foreign teams who's name you cannot even pronounce. However, because of the club winning bronze last season, we have been thrown into the first qualifying round of Europa League, with the first game being only 6 days after I took charge of the club. Therefore, we could only play one friendly before the game against Georgian side, Batumi.
That was against our reserves, of course. Quite an under average perfomance from the team, but we won, nonetheless. I started that game with a 4-2-3-1 formation, and I did it too against Batumi. Fair to say, it was not much off a succes, I will talk about that later. First let's take a look at our friendlies. Game number two and three were much better and though they were against lower oppositions (HIK 2'nd Division, Espergærde Non-league), we made the squad happy and scored some goals too. Great start.
Now onto the fun part: Europa
As I said before, we kicked off our European campain against Batumi from Georgia. A team I knew next to nothing about and that was really it. I went with the same 4-2-3-1 formation as I used against my reserves. It proved to be very useless. That game was the last game with a 4-2-3-1 formation. In the away fixture I went with a 4-3-3/4-5-1 formation. That was probably a good choice. We won 3-0 with no concerns and it made me very happy to see Andreas Bruus breaking some records, becomming the youngest player and goalscorer in Europa League as well for Brøndby.Next round saw as getting a tricky draw against Vaduz. We were close to winning the away tie but Erikssons goal two minutes from time was ruled offside. Nonetheless we did well at home and a brace from our new central defender secured us getting closer to the group stage.
We got quite lucky in the third round, thanks to St. Johnstone knocking out Rosenborg. It would have been much more difficult to play against the Norweigans. We struggled a lot in the first half as we went 1-0 down after only 10 minutes but an inspiring team talk made good, as Juelsgård assisted Erikkson twice to give us a great starting point at home. The result of the home tie will follow later on.
There were only two games to play in the league in the month of july and they both proved to be relatively easy wins:
We were dominant against AGF and it was allmost over at half time. You could say the same against OB, who seemed to not know how to mark the back post from as cross. This makes us league leaders by now, with two games played, tied with Aab, who also have two victories out of two.
In June and July we said hello to three new players, while three were send the other way.
First off Andreas Maxsø from FC Nordsjælland. Arrived for 500k in total - 250k now and 250k over 48 months. This was a very desperate transfer and we may have paid a little bit too much for him, as his contract was due to run out next summer anyways. He got injured in his first training, so he has not played a game yet, but should make his debut in August.
Now this player looks to have a bright future here, at Brøndby Stadion. Paid 600k for him in total with 475k now and the rest over 48 months. Has great potential and has already proved him self being a threath for the opponent in the air. It will be either him or Maxsø who will play alongside Agger when he is fit
The last piece of business from June and July is a true wonderkid. It would be stupid to say no to such a talented kid for only 140 pounds per week. Will play as both a winger and a full back this season.
On the other hand these were the players I sold. It made me clear the squad for deadwood and also made some space in the wage budget.
As a last thing for this month I want to show some awards:
Eriksson has got a great start, not only in the league but also in Europe. He is deadly as a right winger.
And of course he derserves to be in team of the month, alongside Holst and Juelsgård, who had assisted 5 already this season in total.
Now onto August, where we will find out if we will be playing in the Europa League group stage and see if we get a little bit of business done.
August
Wow. Down to earth again. After our magnificent start we were beaten heavily by Randers but 3-0 was harsh. Both Eriksson and Wilczek got injured in that game and both wont be ready before after the transfer window. Maybe it was why we only managed to get two points from 4 games. We should have won against Viborg and Sønderjyske but it was not meant to be.
It leaves us with this table after the first 7 rounds. Fc København are already superior and I doubt that Nordsjælland will close the gap. Still, we should manage to finish in the top 3 this year, otherwise I would be quite dissapointed. Good news is that both Agger, Wilczek and Eriksson should be ready to play after the break. However we have 3 difficult games to play, home against Midtjylland, away against Aab and a new firm derby against Fc København.
Now, we played the first game against St. Johnstone in july. Did we get the job done in Denmark?
Great match against St. Johnstone and we managed to get Slovan Liberec instead of Bordeaux or Athletic Bilbao but we were just unlucky. They scored on their only effort in Denmark and we equalised too late. Close but at least we got some nice prize money for our European run. Hopefully we get a little bit more lucky next year.
On the tranfer side, we have a new player. Please welcome Joaquin Correa, who will be with us for the next 2 seasons:
This means that our transfer story looks as stated:
It leaves us with this squad for the first part of the season:
Hopefully it will be okay. It is very important that we do not get too many injuries, as it maybe was why missed out on the Euro League groupe stage.
Thank you for reading.
