"The third coming of Berg" was how Blackburn's ever-quotable global adviser Shebby Singh heralded Henning's arrival as Rovers manager. The Norwegian won Premier League and League Cup titles during two stints as a player at Ewood Park but those notable achievements will be eclipsed should he heal a divided club and lift it out of the Championship at the first attempt.
Singh left no one, least of all Berg, in any doubt as to what Venky's want from their choice to succeed the calamitous Steve Kean as manager. "Promotion is the minimum and the maximum," he said of this season's target. "We have emphasised that time and again but the most important thing is that Henning welcomes the pressure, he welcomes the challenge. He didn't sit in front of us and say: 'I need three years to build a team or two seasons to get them promoted.' He said: 'I know what you want and I want to be the man to deliver that.'"
The initial reaction to Berg's appointment among Blackburn supporters suggests judgment is reserved on that score, though no one disputes the 43-year-old must succeed following the club's rapid decline since Venky's bought control two years ago. Lessons have been learned. Berg will not have to make regular trips to visit Venky's owner Anuradha Desai in India, as Kean did, and will have a greater say on transfer targets, as Kean allegedly did not.
Rovers' new manager needed to do his own repair work before signing a three-year contract having delivered a scathing assessment of Venky's following the club's relegation in May. Working as a television pundit in Norway, Berg had said: "There are no real managers with credibility who would accept a job like that."
As the man who accepted that job, he now explains: "Those comments were made by me looking in from the outside. Now I know what is happening on the inside and I know what the owners have done in the summer. They are making big decisions. They are putting money in and buying players like Leon Best, Jordan Rhodes, Danny Murphy, Dickson Etuhu and Nuno Gomes; big, important players for this team. They are showing their intent by changing the management as well. They are taking the club in the right direction, looking to make sure this club gets back into the Premier League."
Berg started his managerial career with three productive seasons at Lyn before a difficult period at Lillestrom ended in dismissal last year. "They had been going for the championship when the economic crisis set in and then really struggled financially," he says of Lillestrom. "We had to halve the costs. I suppose my biggest achievement as manager was making more money for the owners than we spent."
Concern at Venky's running of Blackburn was not eased by the five weeks it took to appoint Kean's successor. Berg was one of five names on a list eventually compiled by Singh, the managing director Derek Shaw and the press officer turned general manager Paul Agnew after failing to secure Tim Sherwood's release from Tottenham Hotspur. Harry Redknapp, Ian Holloway, Gus Poyet and Huddersfield's Simon Grayson were the others, although Poyet was reluctant to leave Brighton and talks with Redknapp's representatives broke down. Diego Maradona was even linked at one point. "Come on," said Singh to that invented tale. "He wouldn't want to consider us even if we were interested."
As for Redknapp, Singh added: "It was important to meet Harry's representatives and to tell them where we were coming from and where the speculation was coming from because sometimes that can be very detrimental. In no way the club wanted to be in a situation where we upset Harry by what was said in the media. We had a very constructive discussion and we move on."
Singh insisted a thorough managerial search was required to guarantee there was no repeat of the mistake with Kean. Singh's explanation of how they ultimately arrived at Berg, however, did not suggest that he was an early frontrunner.
Singh, who claimed a legal dispute over the manner of Kean's exit had been resolved, said: "We looked at three different categories. We looked at the wise old head; the senior men, then we looked at the middle group; who have been in management enough, who have tasted success and failure, and then we looked at the third group; the young, vibrant, dynamic modern-thinking manager who could possibly be the next best thing. I think that is no different from what most top clubs in the world do.
"I always cite José Mourinho as an example. In 2002, Porto said 'you are the man.' AVB [André Villas-Boas] in 2010, Jürgen Klopp in Borussia Dortmund in 2008, so that was the third category. I think we have found a manager in Henning who is in the middle group and is also in the third group, so we have got a mixture of both."
