What the hell happened there? Just recently I thought the club was well settling in the subtop but this season...
It has been pretty dire for a while now. Not bad enough to relegate but the games arent fun to watch and less people are visiting games. The technical director decided it was a good idea to sell all quality players and buy back a lot of young players. He sold well because the club does have quite a bit of money in reserve now. However selling all quality players caused that the squad ended up with young players who arent that good. I doubt many of those players will be sold for a profit, like the plan was. Average age this season was 23 according to Transfermarkt and only Vitesse had a younger average age. The average age was also increased a bit in the winter by getting players like former Newcastle player Jetro Willems.
The whole squadbuilding has been an example of how to not build a squad. The technical director has been sacked for it. The decision to sack the former manager and promote someone without any experience to manage the club out of the relegation also hasnt worked out well. Not well at all since he did even worse.
A lot of bad players too. The goalkeeper is a disaster and cost the club multiple points. Only loan player Pepi (an American player) did well by scoring 12 goals in a terrible team.
Loads of problems of the pitch too. The dog of one of the players bit someone and that was reported by the local news. In response the club banned the journalist. The club had a lot of issues with the media this season because they didnt like what was written. Fans came onto the pitch in anger multiple times. A fan hit/assaulted Willems on the head during a game. A game was suspended because someone threw a cup of beer at a linesman. The owner of a popular bar and lifelong fan and sponsor died this year and nobody from the club went to the funeral. This was a bit frowned upon by other fans and sponsors since former club people did go to the funeral. Losing touch with the local fans basically and all there is for a club like Fc Groninger are the local fans.
Relegation sucks but atleast a good manager is hired for next year. Someone who has proven to be able to play good football and also promote clubs to the Eredivise. The technical director is sacked. Some 'club people' have come back to the club. Hopefully we can just quickly bounce back next season because a club like Groningen does belong in the Eredivisie.
