Marked for Marcus Pedersen
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match12 Apr 2036
Beaten 0‑3 by Brann, and beaten everywhere it matters. The inquest starts on the training pitch on Monday morning.
Market14 Apr 2036
Rosenborg say no — this time
The offer from Hødd for Marcus Pedersen 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.
Squad14 Apr 2036
Words exchanged at Rosenborg
Oskar Sivertsen and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Market14 Apr 2036
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Squad14 Apr 2036
Words at Rosenborg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Shola Adelani is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Boardroom14 Apr 2036
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Jonas Dahlberg Strand has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Rosenborg have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Transfer targets14 Apr 2036
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 dugout14 Apr 2036
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Isak Aron Sjong, and the manager let it.
Transfer targets14 Apr 2036
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Rosenborg will try again when the window opens; Bodo/Glimt may not be selling by then.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Apr 2036
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Rosenborg people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The dugout7 Apr 2036
Stefan Meling: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Rosenborg have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Boardroom7 Apr 2036
Window shuts: 15 in, 13 out at Rosenborg
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 15 arrived, 13 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Transfer targets7 Apr 2036
The deal with Bodo/Glimt is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Boardroom7 Apr 2036
A new deal for the man in the dugout, and the clearest thing a board can say without calling a press conference about it. Stability is cheap to promise and expensive to deliver.
Squad7 Apr 2036
Words exchanged at Rosenborg
Fréderic Soelle Soelle and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Boardroom7 Apr 2036
14 academy players handed senior numbers at Rosenborg
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Squad7 Apr 2036
A row about effort at Rosenborg
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Oskar Sivertsen was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom7 Apr 2036
Molde will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Freddie Freedman has pre-agreed a move to Rosenborg, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market24 Mar 2036
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Marcus Pedersen will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Rosenborg the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Transfer targets24 Mar 2036
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at HJK is saying, and nobody at Rosenborg is enjoying the guessing.
Squad24 Mar 2036
Oskar Sivertsen and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets24 Mar 2036
Rosenborg asked and Viking said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad24 Mar 2036
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Rosenborg are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad24 Mar 2036
Words at Rosenborg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Shola Adelani is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Transfer targets24 Mar 2036
FC Copenhagen have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
The dugout24 Mar 2036
Håkon Volden 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 Håkon Volden is on it.
Market24 Mar 2036
The name of Isak Aron Sjong keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Rosenborg say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 Mar 2036
A knee injury of the worst kind for Stefan Pedersen
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rosenborg lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market10 Mar 2036
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Rosenborg have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Market10 Mar 2036
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Rosenborg is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad10 Mar 2036
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Rosenborg this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Mar 2036
Words at Rosenborg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Oskar Sivertsen is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Transfer targets10 Mar 2036
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.
Transfer targets10 Mar 2036
A loan move for Caleb Kporha is in the works
Rosenborg have made the call to HJK. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Transfer targets10 Mar 2036
Hammarby have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
The dugout10 Mar 2036
Shola Adelani 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 Shola Adelani is on it.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match27 Jun 2035
Rosenborg through in the cup
A 3‑0 win over Lillestrom, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings2 Jul 2035
A brace, and Martin Bakkenget takes the afternoon — 8.99
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Martin Bakkenget provided it, and the 8.99 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings2 Jul 2035
Two goals and a mark of 8.16 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings2 Jul 2035
Marked 8.54 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.
Market2 Jul 2035
Paul Ngongo hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Rosenborg can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings2 Jul 2035
Successful dribbles: 27. 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.
Match30 Jun 2035
Rosenborg cannot stop winning
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Market2 Jul 2035
Only the photograph left for Jabu Mokone
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jabu Mokone will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Rosenborg the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad2 Jul 2035
Nenad Damjanoski and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match14 Apr 2035
3‑0, and Martin Bakkenget took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Rosenborg tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings16 Apr 2035
Two goals and a mark of 8.56 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market16 Apr 2035
Only the photograph left for Dylan Dassy
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Dylan Dassy will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Rosenborg the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings16 Apr 2035
Up for the corner, and Elias Slørdal delivers — 7.80
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Elias Slørdal scored, was marked 7.80, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Squad16 Apr 2035
A move Ola Lerheim Olsen would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Ola Lerheim Olsen is living that version at Rosenborg, and it tends to show in the first month.
Boardroom16 Apr 2035
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad16 Apr 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Rosenborg this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Apr 2035
Lukas Reich falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Market16 Apr 2035
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.