2022/23 team preview: FC Zbrojovka Brno
Brno are back among the elite, and here’s a fact I’m sure you didn’t realize: they’ve done it as the actual champions of a unified 2nd tier for the first time since 1971. Since then, they’ve gotten promoted three times in the federal era when the 2nd division was split into Czech and Slovak parts (fair enough), but more importantly, in both 2012 (4th) and 2020 (2nd) they didn’t manage to top the deck below, inevitably scrambling to stay up. Will this year be any different since Zbrojovka could’ve been prepping for another stint in the top flight since, erm, getting relegated?
I don’t know, but what I do know: this preview will be different to the others.
I can’t say I’m awfully familiar with FORTUNA:NÁRODNÍ LIGA, so I won’t be preaching about anything like upgrades, downgrades, what went right, what went wrong, etc. There won’t be many pizza charts to go around either. Instead I’ll just more generically cover the most important questions — how did they get promoted, who have they brought in, how could they do — with my consultants from among Zbrojovka die-hard fans playing a central role.
Therefore, let me thank off the bat to David Szmidt and Sam Beaton of @zbrojovkast, @simon_vecerak, @kone_brnensky, @DurdakZdenek, @HonzaHom and @a_hav_ for their invaluable contributions to the piece. (Some of them, as ever, may have been edited for length, clarity or style.)
I literally couldn’t have done it without you!
Looking back on 2021/22
I don’t have to tell you Zbrojovka dominated last term results-wise. At four different points, they had ventured on a 4-game winning streak, leaving no one to wonder whether they can do it. The 16-point separation between the first and second team of the second tier was the largest gap since 2000 and the dominant FC Synot, with Brno beating other double-digit discrepancies overseen by Č. Budějovice in 2018/19 and Most in 2004/05 along the way.
That said, it wasn’t all green pastures for Zbrojovka in terms of pure results, as well; most notably, they failed to bring points from two of their three trips to the capital (losing to Dukla Praha and Sparta “B”) and fell to a thoroughly embarrassing 0:3 deficit at home against neighbouring Líšeň in March.
Otherwise all fine on the results front, just not quite elsewhere…
“I think our promotion campaign is best summed up by the overwhelmingly negative atmosphere across the fanbase despite the good results. It was all the more odd to hear the ultras chant Richard Dostálek’s name after the game in which we secured promotion, since we’ve just played out a largely even home battle with a 14th-place Třinec. That was the tune of the entire season. We lacked control and dominance of your typical table-topping side, with almost any team able to pin Zbrojovka back and dominate on the ball for at least a few consecutive minutes. Even against below average teams, then, we needed to rely on goalkeeper Martin Berkovec a fair lot.” @simon_vecerak
“In my opinion, this team looked worse than three years ago under Pavel Šustr (editor’s note: when they finished 3rd and didn’t go up), especially in the attacking phase of the game. I believe the 1st place was more a result of all clubs with genuine top flight ambition already composing the top flight, whereas the 2nd division is now full of clubs without money, ambition or infrastructure. It was far more difficult to fight with Hradec and Pardubice two years ago. On the other hand, the trouble-free season had an important side effect in that we were already bringing winter signings in with a view of the top flight — only that way we could’ve lured e.g. Jakub Nečas.” @a_hav_
“Strolling the league is all very well — and it let us use some of what looks like a decent crop of youth players in some of the lesser games — but I have a sense of F:Liga déjà-vu. In a couple of games last season, Dostálek’s tactical inflexibility showed again, and when teams played a deep defensive line and tried to catch us on the break, there was no plan of attack other than get wide and cross it, like a budget David Moyes at Manchester United.” @zbrojovkast
“One positive achievement was definitely the start of the season, because in our previous 2nd-tier campaigns (2018/19 and 2019/20) we would usually stumble right at start of the season and then play a catch up late in the season. This year we were in the lead most of the season, so I wasn’t really worried at Christmas even though our performances weren’t as dominant.” @kone_brnensky
Inside the club’s off-season
Squad makeover
It’s been a turbulent off-season…kind of. Almost too early on, the club announced they are waving goodbye to a duo of serviceable veterans (Jan Moravec and Peter Štepanovský), an experienced holding midfielder (Adrián Čermák) and a utility man with PTSD from filling in at right back (Damián Bariš) in order to finally signal a clear break from the second-tier past and, hopefully, a more ambitious summer. But then… nothing of the sort arrived.
More than 5 000 valuable second-tier minutes sodded off in the form of the four aforementioned (total of over 60 starts), and in came a total of 2 674 top-tier minutes (equivalent of less than 30 starts) accrued by Vlastimil Hrubý, Josef Divíšek, Róbert Matejov and Šimon Falta over the entire 2021/22.
You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. Talk about getting shortchanged.
And you know what, it would be easy to swallow if those departures were from positions of surplus while those arrivals targeted specifically the positions of need, but even that doesn’t appear to be true. Three incoming players have predominantly served as left backs in their careers (Divíšek, Matejov and Denis Granečný), while Falta — whose stock continues to falter *wink wink* — has also deputized there recently and is, presumably, coming to “fix” the left wing where Jakub Přichystal exploded to 14 points (11+3) in just over 20 starts. He was one of a few players of genuine top-tier quality.
Falta’s deployment in defence, meanwhile, likely has something to do with his offence taking a dark turn in the past two years or so. This truly is one ugly pizza chart considering it’s made of a small sample on two good teams (these types of pizza charts are usually too flattering rather than anything else):
As of now, not much movement is expected. Holding midfielder Sven Sprangler has been reluctantly released from his trial (but there’s still a chance, we’re told), while the club appears to be waiting for Plzeň to send them a centre back like they did two years ago in the form of Pernica. A centre forward who’d rival a 34-year-old Jakub Řezníček is, weirdly, not on the list — though there are murmurs Ondřej Mihálik could be on the way from Viktoria.
It’s worth remembering that — captain though he is — Řezníček was godawful in his last top flight campaign on a no worse Teplice side and it’s therefore extremely courageous to be coming into the season with him as the no. 1. Sure, it’s never easy to drop someone who’s fetched you 18 goals in the promotion campaign, but his extra kilos, frequent offsides and clever little dives in the build-up (this foul-drawing ability was his only above average ability in that 2020/21 season, too) should’ve at least made it a tad easier.
Tactical experiments
It was curious to see Dostálek trot out something of a 3-4-3 / 5-4-1 formation against Slovan Bratislava, and with fine success no less — Zbrojovka utilized it in the first half, prevailing 0,96 : 0,41 on the non-penalty xG clock. Could it possibly be a sign of a future setup for high-profile games against Top 3?
Other than that, as @zbrojovkast beautifully puts it, some variation of a 4-1-4-1 — perhaps a flatter 4-5-1 — is “the hill Dostálek has chosen to die on”.
Off the pitch development
The presumed Adolf Šádek-Václav Bartoněk romance has hardly shown this off-season, with Zbrojovka hoping for at least some of the following quartet of Filip Čihák, Robin Hranáč, Modou N’Diaye, Matej Trusa to be released. Nope.
Per @zbrojovkast, “Srbská is apparently undergoing a spot of renovation on the toilets and the main stand (although it’s the concessions kiosks that need looking at), better facilities for the players, and a new pitch. The hope is to get occasional international friendly games, but even that looks unlikely.” The stadium had better offer great service to home fans, indeed, since the Zbrojovka season tickets are reported to be among the most expensive ones in the league.
Oh, and Tipsport is newly on board, because of course they bloody are.
Looking ahead to 2022/23
Below is the team’s current depth chart with a maximum of 4 alternatives for one position. This particular depth chart is up to date as of July 24 and subject to change since the transfer window is far from closed at the moment. Players highlighted in red are longterm absentees rather far from making a comeback, while players in italics are all-but-confirmed arrivals. Those likely to depart will be highlighted in the text below, as will some other depth options or changes occurring since July 24. To add a little flavour, I’ve intuitively rated various positions/areas of the pitch — goal, right flank, left flank, central defence, central midfield, forward positions (incl. attacking midfielders) — on a simple scale (creating five tiers), which is what the different shading (blue to red) represents.
- The centre back deck is too thin, clearly, especially since Jakub Šural is notably injury-prone and neither Endl (yet) nor Hlavica (ever) appear to be top-tier quality. The club still needs one genuinely proven CB for sure.
- There were pre-season signs that Falta and Přichystal could actually swap places, with the former coming onto his stronger left foot from the right. It’s a position where he was mostly played during his failed Baník stint.
- You’ve probably heard about Wale Musa Alli (b. 2000) making waves all across Brno. I mean, when a Nigerian kid — or in other words, a non-Czech— has got Petr freaking Švancara excited while drawing a standing ovation in a pre-season game, you know he’s for real. Musa Alli is a dynamic winger with great close control and some refreshing poise to his game, as @zbrojovkast notes: “If the game needed a simple pass to calm things down, that’s what he did. If it needed an unexpected sprint into space, it got that, too.”
- One worry, per @simon_vecerak, would be for Dostálek to shackle Musa Alli and other wingers with too many defensive instructions. There were signs of peculiar fullback man-marking in pre-season already, and Dostálek does enjoy shoehorning players in roles they’re unsuited for. Other worry would be for Musa Alli to become a little too predictable with time considering his heavy right-foot bias; but that can be fixed.
- Matejov is a sneaky good pick-up, though he’s about to play on the right (as a rightie) after years of making for a fine inverted ball-spreader at LB.
- I’m super-pumped to see what that central midfield can do, as it’s got some tremendous mixture of talent and balance for a promoted 2nd-tier side. Slavia loanee Filip Blecha has instantly made Jiří Texl flourish alongside him (which makes the club desperately targeting a holding midfielder another weird priority), while Michal Ševčík was already a subject of Sparta’s interest this summer by no accident. He usually fills the right half space with his left-footed brilliance, ie. already appears comfortable doing what Sparta fans probably wish for Karabec to do. Six of his ten 2021/22 assists, by the way, came via set piece delivery, so watch out for that, too.
- Speaking of wonderkids hailing from Brno, Ondřej Pachlopník is back after a devastating 2021/22. He was quite literally a no-show at Plzeň and I’ve read some concerns online that he’s labouring through a career-threatening injury. That hopefully doesn’t prove to be the case, but for now, he hasn’t taken part in pre-season and may not feature in the fall.
Season forecast
OK, can you stop shouting at me for a bit? I’m aware that projecting Zbrojovka to finish as high as 10th and have a 1% shot at European cups is a bit on the controversial side, but did you miss out on my Hradec preview intro? It’d actually be very much on-brand and I, for one, am not going to argue too much with Jakub’s model working with decades of 1st and 2nd-tier data.
At the same time, it’s worth noting Brno are still more likely to land in the relegation group (48%) than anywhere else. Their 10th-place projection is simply a result of too many poor teams sitting neck-and-neck. Someone has to finish this high, and I wouldn’t bet on Bohemians (0,3 projected points behind Brno) or Hradec (2,7) doing so more than I would on Zbrojovka, honestly.
Bold prediction
The track record: -
The prediction: Whatever the hell happens, Richard Dostálek will survive it all
The rationale: I’m sorry, Zbrojovka fans, you ain’t getting rid of him.
Dostálek may have only won five of 28 top flight games as a coach, and he might as well be signed under two more relegations from the first tier as a player (2010/11 with Brno, two years earlier with Zlín), but he’s got this owner’s eternal trust and recent history on his side. Only Opava (2018) have fired a second-tier champion of a manager mid-season in the past six years.
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