Marked for Terry Benjamin
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad7 Dec 2026
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. IK Start will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Squad7 Dec 2026
7 clean sheets across a season, and the one award on the pitch nobody else is eligible for. Most keepers get through a whole career without a year like it.
Squad7 Dec 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IK Start this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Dec 2026
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Jesper Cornelius has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Omar Jebali, and the manager let it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout16 Nov 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad16 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IK Start this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Terry Benjamin, and the manager let it.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
Håkon Lorentzen has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at IK Start will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Market16 Nov 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Sebastian Griesbeck has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at IK Start.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
Mikael Ugland knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at IK Start, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Looking ahead16 Nov 2026
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Erlend Dahl Reitan’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and IK Start needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Market16 Nov 2026
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Felix Kutsche Eriksen’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Fredrik Pålerud has seen what the next man earns
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at IK Start that is a harder question to answer.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Anders Hiim beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 26. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad2 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IK Start this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match31 Oct 2026
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 6 matches without defeat is a foundation IK Start did not have in the autumn.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Håkon Lorentzen was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.02. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad2 Nov 2026
A muscle injury and 14 days out for Omar Jebali
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. IK Start will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Loan watch2 Nov 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at IK Start, and 5 appearances in 10 say he has earned the hearing.
Match31 Oct 2026
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad2 Nov 2026
It will be explained as a change for the team and it may even be one. Nobody who has worn one believes that, and neither does the man who has just had it taken away.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Martin Bohinen after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Anders Hiim beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 22. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad5 Oct 2026
A falling-out at IK Start
John Olav Norheim and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The terraces5 Oct 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Match3 Oct 2026
It finished 1‑0, and it was Terry Benjamin’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to IK Start.
Squad5 Oct 2026
12 new faces, and IK Start are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
7.30, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. IK Start had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Felix Kutsche Eriksen has come out of that comparison in the side, and IK Start have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages swallow 85% of the IK Start income
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
“That is what I want every week. Not the result, the way they went about it.” The manager, after 1‑0, already talking about the next one.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad7 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IK Start this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Too much change too quickly at IK Start
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Kristoffer Tønnessen has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Johan Meyer moves up the pecking order
Nothing is announced when this happens and everybody knows. He is a bigger part of the plan at IK Start than he was a month ago, and the training ground worked that out before the team sheet said so.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
Terry Benjamin has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at IK Start will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match12 Aug 2026
Cup progress for IK Start
A 3‑0 win over Bodo/Glimt, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Marked 8.23 at 21, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Market17 Aug 2026
Haugesund come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and IK Start did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Deadline passes with 2 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at IK Start until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at IK Start this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
IK Start asked and Sarpsborg 08 said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Alexander Gurendal has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Terry Benjamin was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.21. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.