Fans views of what went wrong

Hi Terry.
Great to hear from a Brøndby-fan abroad!

Deciphering what went wrong is complex, as many factors have contributed to the poor results this season. Most fans agree that part of the problem has been on the transfer side where the club has sold it's best players after the championship (as it should) but then ended up with a squad of players with too few experienced, sure-to-be-on-the-pitch profiles and way to many players that were neither young talents nor experienced (aka a lot of playes in the age 21-23 coming from smaller clubs). Adding to this, a lot of the new players seem to not fit the role they were intended, meaning that the sum of projects players that have to learn a new role has been very high.

This season started off with a team that was obviously not capable of competing at the top of the league but eventually the club landed some really good players in the very last week of the transfer window. At that stage, however, the club had missed the qualification to Europa League and Conference League, and were massively behind in the national league. That put enormous pressure on everyone to win games and the performance on the pitch has been sub-standard, but also there have been many games that were tied or lost in the last 5 minutes.

On top of this, there have been massive rumors about the majority shareholder selling the club off to external investors, which is now a reality. The new investors are US-based and they have existing investments in other European clubs. This has been met with protests from fans and - in my view - added to the tension and not helped the players perform on the pitch.

The head coach - whose contract was set to expire this next summer - has now been let go and everyone is awaiting the name of his replacement, as well as what will happen in January in terms of outgoing and incoming transfers. So, we probably need to wait until February before the dust has settled before we can start guessing on our chance of climbing back to the top of the league this season. The only upside is that there are very few points separating number 3 and 10 in the league this year, so if Brøndby comes back in February with a stronger team (and some of the other teams sell some of their best players) then it is certainly still within reach to compete for, say third place which would earn us a ticket to European tournaments (where the big money is).

Thank you for replying del Piero.
Any team needs a mix of young players who have come through the youth system and older, experienced players. Getting the correct balance is difficult!
At Cambridge United we had Wes Hoolahan (Irish, he played a lot for Norwich) who left us after a couple of seasons, aged 40. He was by far the most gifted player we have ever had, our manager agrees too! All our younger players learnt a lot from watching him.

I really struggle to understand why anyone would want to buy a football club if they are not fans! The only reason I can see is they can make money by investing a little, then sell for much more. Or it is a tax avoidance thing!
But if they get a good manager, invest in the team and get Brondby back to being feared and in the top 3 every season that will be good.
At least there is a rest period for the World Cup and Christmas .
Hope you had a good J-dag!
Terry