Marked for Filip Artykiewicz
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market8 Feb 2027
The offer from Aalesund for Bent Sørmo was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Transfer targets8 Feb 2027
The offer went to IK Start this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Transfer targets8 Feb 2027
$110.0K on the table at Rosenborg. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Transfer targets8 Feb 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout8 Feb 2027
Victor Dedes has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Stromsgodset 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.
Boardroom8 Feb 2027
A month in which every rumour is possible and most of them are nonsense. The manager has a list, the board has a number, and neither is telling the other the whole of it.
Squad8 Feb 2027
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Stromsgodset would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Market8 Feb 2027
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Elias Hoff Melkersen signs something — a contract at Stromsgodset or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Squad8 Feb 2027
A programme of his own, away from the group, aimed at one thing the staff think is holding him back. Most improvement happens like this and none of it makes the paper.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad18 Jan 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Filip Artykiewicz
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stromsgodset lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market18 Jan 2027
Bent Sørmo has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Stromsgodset they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom18 Jan 2027
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Bent Sørmo has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
Nobody at Stromsgodset 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.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
Fredrik Ardraa 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 Stromsgodset, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Market18 Jan 2027
The Jesper Taaje talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Stromsgodset know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Stromsgodset have no good answer.
Squad18 Jan 2027
The least glamorous thing a foreign signing ever does and the one that decides most of them. A player who can hear the shout behind him is a different footballer from one who cannot.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Jan 2027
Filip Artykiewicz damages knee ligaments — 30 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 30 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad11 Jan 2027
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad11 Jan 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Alie Conteh and Stromsgodset agree another 4 years.
The dugout11 Jan 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alie Conteh, and the manager let it.
The dugout11 Jan 2027
Victor Dedes gets picked when it counts
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Victor Dedes is on it.
The dugout11 Jan 2027
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Stromsgodset, and both men came out saying it was fine.