Marked for Daniel Kulusevski
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match30 Oct 2032
9 matches without a win for Sandviken
The run now stands at 9, and the questions being asked around Sandviken are no longer polite ones.
Match1 Nov 2032
Sandviken are in real trouble now
Position 14, 25 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Squad1 Nov 2032
Ollie Dewsbury and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad1 Nov 2032
A row about effort at Sandviken
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Aron Snær Friðriksson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom1 Nov 2032
The borrowing at Sandviken reaches $17.7M
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $17.7M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
Market1 Nov 2032
A stepping stone, not a home, for Tolga Soyuncu
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Sandviken were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
The dugout1 Nov 2032
The team sheet said everything about Ollie Dewsbury
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Ollie Dewsbury.
The dugout1 Nov 2032
“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.
Market1 Nov 2032
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sandviken, another week without a signature from Aron Snær Friðriksson.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces10 May 2032
Anger at Sandviken spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Squad10 May 2032
10 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Match5 May 2032
The cup run ends for Sandviken
0‑3 against IFK Norrkoping, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
The terraces10 May 2032
0-3. Going out of a cup is one afternoon; going out like that is a week of phone-ins, and the manager will hear every one of them.
Player ratings10 May 2032
Marked 7.77 at 19, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Squad10 May 2032
Daniel Strindholm and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match8 May 2032
A 1‑0 win over Örgryte, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Boardroom10 May 2032
The borrowing at Sandviken reaches $17.4M
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $17.4M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
Boardroom10 May 2032
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces12 Apr 2032
The mood at Sandviken has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Squad12 Apr 2032
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match10 Apr 2032
The wait goes on for Sandviken
8 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad12 Apr 2032
Daniel Strindholm and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings12 Apr 2032
Jostein Ekeland did the work nobody counts — 6.52
13 combined actions and 6.52. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Boardroom12 Apr 2032
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Transfer targets12 Apr 2032
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.
Match10 Apr 2032
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad12 Apr 2032
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Daniel Kulusevski and Sandviken agree another 3 years.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Apr 2032
Johan Arvidsson damages knee ligaments — 19 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 19 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.
Match3 Apr 2032
No end in sight to Sandviken's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Sandviken has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad5 Apr 2032
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Boardroom5 Apr 2032
Window shuts: 10 in, 18 out at Sandviken
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 10 arrived, 18 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Squad5 Apr 2032
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Daniel Kulusevski has just signed for Sandviken, and for once the answer mattered.
Transfer targets5 Apr 2032
The paperwork begins on Tin Livaja
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Sandviken have done the hard part with Degerfors, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Boardroom5 Apr 2032
6 academy graduates step up at Sandviken
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Boardroom5 Apr 2032
$215.5K of the owner's money at Sandviken
The shortfall was covered from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be relieved and entitled to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings usually arrive together.
Boardroom5 Apr 2032
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.