New Burton co-owner Bendik Hareide vows to ‘create a sustainable club’

Burton’s new owners want to take the League One club to the next level but have vowed to run it with self-sustainability.

The Nordic Football Group (NGF) bought the Brewers from long-standing owner Ben Robinson last month, having identified them as the “perfect fit” for their aims.

They want the club, who narrowly avoided relegation to League Two last season, to be financially sustainable and will not splash the cash like Hollywood-owned Wrexham in order to chase glory.

Co-owner Bendik Hareide, who is also the new sporting director, told the PA news agency: “It is really exciting. We were looking for the right club for us and it landed on Burton Albion.

“We felt it was a perfect fit, the sustainable foundation, having the right values aligned.

“The vision is definitely to create a sustainable club in the EFL. Sustainability is the key for us.

“For us in the short term it is all about creating a stable club. We want to build brick by brick, we want to build on the foundation Ben Robinson left for us.

“We have to be patient, it takes time for these things to settle. We want to be a stable, well-run League One club and if we can follow our strategy we just have to see where this takes us.

“What is most important is to not deviate from what Burton Albion is.

“I won’t sit here and talk about promotion. At this moment it is all about stability and building a good foundation to build on and then we’ll see where we get.”

Hareide says he has “strong bonds” with English football, having lived in the country while his dad Age played for Manchester City and Norwich in the 1980s and recalled listening to long-wave radio from his home in Norway as a child, trying to get commentary of English games.

The Norwegian, whose dad is now coach of Iceland and masterminded a friendly win over England at Wembley last month, insists NFG will not be problematic foreign owners, like those seen at Reading, Charlton and Sheffield Wednesday in recent seasons.

“Our model is to be financially stable, we want to create a club where young players can come in and evolve,” he said.

“We won’t deviate from that. We have to earn the fans’ trust.

“We have huge respect and are very humbled for the task given to us. We need to treat the club with respect.

“The club is nothing without the fans. We are not done at this season, we need to find the Burton way.”

One of NFG’s first acts was to appoint Chelsea academy coach Mark Robinson as the new first-team head coach.

Robinson was at Stamford Bridge for two years and saw 16 academy players make their first-team debut.

“It is a really exciting opportunity,” he added to the PA news agency. “There was always that feeling that I wanted to come back as a head coach but you need to make sure it is the right kind of project, the more I spoke to the new owners the more it sounded right.

“We are so aligned in our thinking and the way we want to do things. Things were going really well at Chelsea, we had 16 debuts in two years, I was enjoying my time.

“When I was first approached I was more curious than anything. It was too good to turn down.”