Football Season Guide

Sandefjord were by far and away the best story of the season last year as they played some excellent football throughout and made a mockery of the pre-season expectations about them being the relegation favourites. Instead, they played as a team fighting for the European places for the most part and they never really ran out of steam or lost their hunger as the campaign went on, playing smart, one-touch attacking football and being a joy to watch for their fans and neutrals. Naturally, building on that achievement and even matching it will be a huge task for Andreas Tegström in his second season as a solo manager of the club. Given that they were one of the two or three clubs with the smallest budgets, they will be naturally expected to drop down the rankings again this season and be more among the lower mid-able outfit. Yet the confidence and momentum they gained from such a strong campaign last season may well be something that gets passed on at least early on this season and Sandefjord should not be just waved way as a side that is certain to be near the bottom places this year. They may have lost a couple of key players in Stefan Sigurdarsson and Filip Ottosson but things like that happen every year for the Whales and they have shown they have no trouble replacing them. Nikolaj Møller, who did reasonably well for Strømgodset last season on loan, is the main likely to lead the attack. Jakob Vester seems like an interesting addition in midfield too while keeping hold of players like Vetle Egeli, Jacob Dunsby and Evangelos Potoulidis shows that there is also a fair bit of continuity in the squad. The one worry is the paper thin depth of the group at the moment and while they mostly avoided injury problems last season, a loss of a few important players at the same time may well hit them had. Yet as a whole they look to be in a great spot before the start of the season as there is a sense of optimism in a club that is moving places and is ready to again claim a spot in mid-table.