Just a year after nearly being promoted to the Bundesliga, Eintracht Braunschweig finished second bottom of the league and will start next season in the third division.
Relegation was completely unexpected from a side which looked so consistent last season. But the club is now plunged into uncertainty after head coach for a decade, Thorsten Lieberknecht, resigned.
Braunschweig never played that well this season, but only entered the bottom two on the final day of the season.
The start of the season showed no signs of the disaster that was to follow at the end of the campaign. Lieberknecht’s side were unbeaten until a round 8 defeat by newly promoted Jahn Regensburg. However Eintracht struggled to win matches, and drew a total of 10 games in their opening 17, 15 overall in the season.
Whilst Braunschweig never fell that low in the table, there were few notable results, and the team failed to win two matches back to back throughout the entire season. A run of 8 matches without a win in the closing stages of the campaign, including three defeats in the final three rounds, sealed their fate.
Even though Lieberknecht has had plenty of success with Braunschweig over the years, including a spell in the Bundesliga, this year he simply lost control of the team. The coach failed to settle on a formation and was unable to replace striker Christoffer Nyman who was injured for most of the second half of the season.
As a result Braunschweig scored just 15 in the final 17 rounds of play. Injuries to key players did not help, but overall the squad underachieved.
The one bright light in the squad was Norwegian centre-back Gustav Valsik who played every minute of the season and led the defence expertly. The club will hope to retain him as quality will be needed to bounce back into the second division.
