Why Burton's rebuild is more than just flatpack football

Burton Albion are yet to win in League One this season and are second bottom in the table

With a record 23 players delivered in the summer and a new Nordic design to follow, manager Mark Robinson knows he has been tasked with rebuilding Burton Albion in a unique way.

Football club takeovers don't usually come with an instruction manual, but the League One side's new Sweden-based ownership group had compiled an exhaustive set of blueprints.

It demanded a total shift in the way Burton played and an overhaul of the squad to make it work.

"The pieces have to fit together," Robinson told BBC Sport at the club's long-time training base at St George's Park on the outskirts of Burton-upon-Trent, which they share with England's national teams.

Those pieces included slotting together an almost completely new squad, as Burton set a new British record for players signed in a single transfer window. A total of 10 midfielders, eight defenders, four forwards and one goalkeeper arrived.

But Robinson was quick to point out that he is working on much more than what appears to be a quick-assemble, flatpack football revolution at the Pirelli Stadium.

"It's more that we want to play a style of football that is exciting, that will generate new fans," Robinson added. "They want to us to go toe-to-toe with teams.

"And it's a style of football that will develop players."

Robinson left Chelsea, where he was development squad manager, to take charge of a third-tier club that months earlier narrowly avoided relegation on the final day of the season - the most dramatic of of relegation escape acts in recent years.

He was the first appointment made by the Nordic Football Group (NFG) - an eclectic consortium of more than 18 backers that includes H&M chairman Karl Johan Persson, at least two other billionaires, and NHL ice hockey stars Erik Karlsson and Mats Zuccarello.

So, what would convince Robinson to leave a Premier League club for a side that had struggled in recent years and just been taken over by foreign owners, who were little known in England and whose plan was a radical reimagining of the Brewers?

"It all sounded a little bit grand, to be honest," Robinson said as he reflected on the first "call out of the blue" he got about the job.

Still, he agreed to meet over video conference, where he says NFG stakeholders popped up on his screen "like a scene out of the Brady Bunch", and together they spoke of their ideas for a club with an already strong community focus to invest in people and a brand of football that would "excite".

"I was only really turned when I felt they would have the patience to see it through," Robinson said.

"Because you hear a lot about ‘this is what we want to do and how we want to do it’, but as soon as they face a little bit of adversity, everyone panics and they do completely the opposite."

Robinson has been there before, with his only previous experience in senior management lasting less than a year at AFC Wimbledon after stepping into the role after years of instrumental work establishing the club's academy.

And now with Burton winless in League One after nine games and second from bottom on four points, the composure of the new owners is being put to the test.

"If you are data driven – and it’s not all about data by the way – but it does give you an intelligent insight into what's happening and if things are working," Robinson said.

"If it’s just based on emotion, then football can take you into all different places, and I've been there before where so much was working but because there wasn’t the data to back it up, or people didn’t want to listen to it, then you get kneejerk reactions.

"They have a realistic approach, and there will be time given to make it happen. It’s more the overriding look of what the football needs to look like and because they are seeing that, everyone is staying calm."

Mark Robinson worked at Chelsea for two years

Burton's new custodians, who spent four years searching Spain, Italy, France and England for a team to buy and ultimately transform, purchased the east Staffordshire club from long-time owner Ben Robinson - a local businessman who was key in taking the Brewers from the depths of non-league football to the once unimaginable heights of the Championship.

Robinson has remained honorary chairman, while his daughter Fleur has returned as chief executive - a role she held at Wrexham under the Hollywood ownership of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Norwegian Bendik Hareide, the son of Iceland manager and former Manchester City and Norwich defender Age Hareide, is among those who now holds 'significant interest' in Burton.

He is also NFG's sporting director, and has overseen the summer overhaul at the Brewers - a side that now puts an emphasis on possession and build-up play from a younger, more agile squad.

"It has been busy, I can confirm that," he told BBC Sport from his home in Norway.

"We had a clear strategy for Nordic Football Group before we came into the club - the way we wanted to play football and how we wanted to run the football operations.

"Mark Robinson was recruited because he matches the style of play, and these players that the club has acquired matches Robbo's way of playing football."

It is an approach that the owners hope delivers on and off the pitch.

"Our model is to have a style of play that: One - can compete in League One, and win games. Then two - can develop players to make sure that we play in a certain way that makes those players attractive, because when League One clubs do well, then bigger clubs start looking at their players.

"That is where we have to fit into the food chain."

Burton Albion, with a squad including Portsmouth manager John Mousinho, won promotion to the Championship in 2016

There were 47 player movements at Burton over the summer - as 24 of the players on the books at the end of last season have either moved on or - in the case of club great and now Burton coach, John Brayford - retired.

When Brayford first joined Burton almost two decades ago as a teenager embarking on a college course, his first training session was on the pitches at Marston's Brewery – one of the town’s many beer manufacturers.

The 36-year-old went on to make 316 league appearances, spanning four divisions from the non-league to the Championship, across three spells with the Brewers.

He previously described his decision to move onto the coaching team after the change of ownership as a "natural progression".

"We can be extremely proud of our past, but this is a new chapter - actually it’s not even a new chapter but a new book for the club," he said.

"It’s valuable to know what this football club is about and where this football club has come from, but I'm a massive believer in making your own history. Right now, under this new ownership we have a massive opportunity to show where it all started."

Just one player - defender Ryan Sweeney - who was in the first XI for the season-ending defeat to Fleetwood in April was there to start in the first game under new ownership this season at Lincoln.

"We knew we had to change the squad composition," Hareide said.

"You have to make a decision. Do you take it in two bits, keep half the squad then wait until contracts run out next summer and so on. Or do you you rebuild immediately?

"We landed on rebuild immediately due to the completely changed style of play. It was necessary going forward."

From left to right: Burton's commercial director Kevin Skabo, NFG sporting director Bendik Hareide and Burton deputy chairman Tom Davidson

Players from across the football landscape - in England and overseas - were quickly corralled.

Among them: England Under-20 international Charlie Webster, signed for an undisclosed fee from Chelsea after spending last season on-loan in the Netherlands with Heerenveen, Costa Rica international Alejandro Bran, a loan signing from Major League Soccer side Minnesota United, and Terence Vancooten, a Guyana international whose move from Stevenage is understood to have made him one of Burton's most expensive ever signings.

Burton's spending has had rivals talking of their new financial flex, but Hareide says "speculation that new owners are throwing money at it" was to be expected - despite not wanting to divulge what the rebuild has cost.

"We are not splashing cash at all," he added.

"I feel we have been smart. I don’t want to disclose any fees, but I can confirm that Terence was a signature signing for us because he is an establish League One player, who performed well last season and he has proven attributes that fit our model and style of player - a backbone we want to have at the club."

For Hareide it's a "brick-by-brick" project, about getting everyone "aboard the same boat and rowing in the same direction".

And when jokingly asked about its similarities to flatpack furniture, he laughed as he said: "I'm Norwegian, we are envious of what the Swedes have done with Ikea".

And in Tom Davidson, NFG have a Swedish founder who has gone on to become deputy chairman at Burton.

The consortium around him has been "handpicked", Davidson explains, with Burton Albion the focus of what he calls "dynamic Nordic cooperation" whose aim is to try establish a "sustainable and stable" League One club whose way of working can help shape the game in the countries that each stakeholder represents.

"Can we make a difference from the Nordic scene in the number one football county in the world? The responsibilities, the challenges and the opportunities are massive with going into an English football club," Davidson said.

"Club football today is so big, so there is space not only for the giants, but for other clubs with other values - smaller vibrant clubs with a big heart and who maybe have a smile on their face."

At a club with an image shaped by the town it represents, whose stadium holds just under 7,000 spectators and shares a training ground with England's national teams, Davidson is adamant they can carve out a place as "one of the coolest most progressive clubs".

"This was the brewing capital of England, we are called the Brewers, we have a fat guy kicking a ball on the shield - we can do so much cool fans stuff at the stadium with this," he added.

"Burton is a fantastic underdog club, from this little town that has had a miracle journey. We can maybe have a unique and positive space in football."