After Eirik Horneland’s entry as Brann’s head coach, the team is barely recognizable from earlier this year.
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To take the most literal first: Only three of the players who had confidence in the starting line-up of Horneland’s predecessor Kåre Ingebrigtsen in the first round of the series this year, are left on the team that tried in vain to beat Mjøndalen in the previous round. Those who started 1-1 match at Consto Arena is in practice a topped Horneland eleven.
Four from the series opener against Viking are no longer in the club, and six on today’s Brann team had other employers when the season started. It tells most about the summer cleaning at the Stadium before the autumn hunt for a new contract in the Elite Series.
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– It illustrates that Brann attacked this season in an exceptionally naive way. They had lots of fresh faces and replacements in the stable, but had to play football in a way that indicated that they had a team that was top three in Norway. The stable they had was not close, and that naivety made Brann come out so crooked, says Bergens Tidende expert and former Brann player Erik Huseklepp.
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Eirik Horneland answers in this way whether there has been a desired development with all the changes on the team.
– No, it tells a little about the problems we have had. We are happy with the squad we have here now, but it is difficult to enter the month of August with a completely new team. A team that will be built, interacted and that will be confident in each other on and off the field. We have a big piece of work ahead of us, Horneland states.
Before the TV Norway-broadcast key settlement against Stabæk (second last in the table) on Sunday, he can be sure that the players are doing that job:
Since the mound landing was promoted to head coach – and stood in the middle aftermath scandals from the second working day – the club has been the country’s fifth best team.
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Only top teams, all in the gold contest, have been better than Hornelands Brann. But the ordinary elite league table is not as cheerful as the VG-invented “Horneland table”. Brann is still third last.
– I think we are on the right track. We have 11 points in the last seven, but we were dependent on picking as well, since we had seven in the first 14. We have come up in the rings, is a team that is better connected, and a team that looks more dangerous out in every single match. Then there will be a battle for margins until December 12, Branns still believes in a temporary coach.
He was an assistant when the Bergen year 2021 started with a loud commotion around artificial grass, and that the members overturned the proposal about plastering the surface at the Stadium, one can afterwards ask whether it was just as well.
For seven artificial turf matches out of the season, Brann has zero victories and three points, although it was hard to believe that the club’s football nemesis Mjøndalen refused to take this year’s first triumph on the plastic pitch almost two weeks ago:
– I do not have a good answer to that. We train on grass every day and like to play on grass. If we look at the performance, we should have won against Mjøndalen, says midfield manager Sivert Heltne Nilsen, one of the many newcomers this summer.
– Is a bad trend in the artificial turf league the Elite Series?
– That’s it, admits midfielder Fredrik Pallesen Knudsen – also picked up by the Horneland regime.
– It goes a little faster and it is almost a different type of sport. But the benefits for artificial turf and grass layers are growing. We have picked up two points in two difficult away games where we have been involved. It is a strong sign, says the returning Bergen native and aims twice 1-1 against Tromsø and Mjøndalen.
Three out of four away games remain on artificial turf. That means six matches on the surface Brann apparently likes best.
– I’m not stressed about it with artificial turf for our part, we handle it well. We have generally picked up few points away from home. That is a bigger challenge, Horneland thinks about those statistics.
See more statistics for the Elite Series on VG Live.–
