Football Season Guide

Haugesund were never really in danger of being dragged down to a battle for survival last season, a testament of the effective work of coach Jostein Grindhaug, who has managed to keep this team ticking along nicely year after year with a pretty small squad as a whole. They will be looking to once again stay in the middle of the pack and not get too close to the danger places and the most important aspect in that regard will be getting good results at home early on to give themselves cushion. Yet, there is no denying that Haugesund did lose some real quality over the season and could well be facing more challenging campaign. Two potent and speedy wingers in Nicklas Sandberg and Kristoffer Velde are off to new adventures and will be certainly hard to replace. Benjamin Hansen is another big loss at the back after he joined title chasers Molde. The squad did get boosted by some good new signings as well, with Hilary Gong a bit of a wildcard after coming from Vitesse, while Soren Reese is a pretty good defender at Eliteserien series and should go a long way into filling the Hansen void. Therefore, the basis is there for a competitive squad that should not have too much trouble in garnering enough points to stay up and the one issue for them is a potential injury crisis testing a rather small squad.