From zero to hero - around the world

We grabbed convincing win today and we proved everyone that unexpected loss in previous game didn't affect our morale.

We have lost very important game today and those 3 points can cost us automatic promotion :(

We've lost another 2 points and it looks like we are doomed to play in promotion playoffs. Our accuracy was terrible today.

We finally got a win and it is a very important one, because we've won against one of the teams which are, among us, in promotion-playoff-zone!

We were lucky to even get 1 point today because we had big problems with creating chances, so supporters are probably happy with this 1 point. I am not, because it's another loss of points (we've lost 7 points in last 5 matches, including this one).

We're on 4th place and 7 points behind 2nd with only 4 games to go. It is theoretically still possible for us to get automatic promotion but I'd rather focus on not losing playoff-spot, because this is also theoretically possible.

Surprisingly, I got job offer from... Poland:

I felt that this offer came in a wrong moment of the season. We can still get promoted (which would be another historical thing for Egersunds!) so it doesn't feel good to leave the team at this point. Maybe if the offer came after the season and we failed to get promotion I'd consider it, but at this point I have to decline and finish my job at Egersunds!

We failed to win match against team from 2nd place so with only 3 games remaining and 7 points less than them in league we now really can't expect to get 2nd place. We can slowly begin preparations for playoffs.

We beat one of the teams which will be our rivals in playoffs today with so much confidence that everyone was simply delighted with this result! (of course only everyone who supports Egersunds IK )

We played really poorly today and did not deserve to win this. It is also worrying because Sarpsborg may also be our rivals in playoffs...

2nd loss in a row is never a good sign... We played poorly and had only 1 shot on target. We have to put ourselves together quickly because we will play in playoffs in a week. This was last match of regular season so here is the final league table:

4th place is really, really good, but let's see how have we played in playoffs!

We got our revenge on Sarpsborg today. We scored 2 quick goals and later controlled the game till the very end and we advanced to 2nd round of playoffs!

What a crazy game it was! Stabaek scored at the very beginning of the match but we managed to even the result before half time. I knew that we're not playing the best game in our lives so I made 3 changes between 50th and 60th minute. And then the "fun" begun... 2 injuries left us with only 9 players against 11 on the other side and result was only a draw. Then the impossible happened - after counter attack Eriksen, left alone in attack, scored the goal and we were winning! Stabaek of course rushed into attack but every player in my team defended well and we even scored 3rd goal in stoppage time! What a match! We advance to 3rd round but there 14th team from Tippeligaen will wait for us.

I was not very happy that we got to play 1st leg on our stadium because it's always tricky in cups if you lose goal on your stadium. Luckily for us, we played amazingly well and Songdal could do absolutely nothing! Confident 2:0 looks very good before 2nd leg!

I knew before this match that if we score a goal it will almost certainly mean winning promotion for us. Unfortunately, Songdal scored really soon and everyone started to worry. Then, after few nervous minutes, Haland scored for us and from then match was controlled by us for almost all the time. Final result is only a draw, but it's a winning draw which means that we got promotion!

We also broke some records and earned some money thanks to our great performances in this season:

Because of some regulations we have to expand our stadium to be able to play in Tippeligaen:

This basically means this: we got unbelievable promotion, earned some money (100k) from cup, 250k from league position, some other money from TV rights and now we are punished and we have to say good bye to 2.27M!!! Just WTF?!

Year 2014 ended and 2015 started. Players were still on vacation but I already started thinking about upcoming season. Despite getting promotion club is still in poor financial situation, has big debt, has not so big status (almost all teams from 2nd tier and even some from 3rd tier are more known) and we are also still only semi-professional club... Before we took some actions on transfer market, supporters summarized previous season and chose best player and best eleven:

I couldn't agree more with best player choice. Walde was a really hard rock in defense and he even broke Adeccoligaen's average rating record!

Although I didn't want to make to many changes to our squad because it can always result in bad first half of the season (because they have to integrate into the team first), I decided that we need a few changes. Our first new signing was not a player though. Previous assistant manager was not a bad one but he wanted too much money to have in new contract so instead he is now an unemployed assistant manager. We got instead new assistant manager who is 2 times cheaper and a bit better than his predecessor:

Now let's move on to our new players:

I signed this guy because he is really solid for all MC positions and he is still only 21! I hope he develops into even better player!

Helgeland is a player who will be 3rd choice AMC for now, but he has been brought to the club with hopes that he will develop quickly alongside older players and later play more important role in our squad (especially when Boe retires).

I hope that Darboe will be our killer striker. In past seasons our team scored lots of goals but we lacked leader in attack. Darboe may be able to take this leadership.

This is our last signing. Finally we have second decent DL!

Below you can see our transfers summary:

Yeah - we made amazing 3k profit on transfer this year! It's my personal record so far ;)

As always, we've played some pre-season friendlies:

Results are quite amazing but those matches are only friendlies and were played to get sharpness back and morale up. I hope that we achieved this because from now on there will be zero easy matches.

We played our first match with tough opponents (although in reality there will be no easy opponent for us this season) and, despite being a little bit dominated by Valerenga, we were accurate today and we grabbed our first 3 points in our first match in Tippeligaen in Egersunds' history!

Another really hard game for us. Brann were attacking almost all the time so we can be very happy with 1 point (and clean sheet).

We have our first loss. Start totally dominated us and we didn't even get single shot on target. I hope that there won't be too many similar games.

This match was a lot more even than previous three. We've won only because we created 2 CCCs opposed to Odd's 0.

Tromso played really well in defense today and we had no idea how to crack their defense. Poor game and no points for us.

Although we haven't dominated any of played 5 games so far, we have really nice 7 points and can be happy with our score. Only time can tell if this was just beginner's luck or we can really think about staying up.

We are starting to fight more and more evenly against other teams but we also lost our accuracy from previous season. Every 1 point is valuable though.

Viking are very strong team and they showed us that we are still too weak to even think of beating them. This time we got 0 points and this is 3rd league match in a row without win, so I hope that we will grab a win soon.

This was another even match and we really should be happy with 1 point but I am getting a little bit worried because long runs without a win can be devastating to team's morale...

We played our first Cupen match this season against Trauma, which is team which we should beat very easily. Unfortunately for us, many players felt really complacent and we didn't scored a goal in first half. Second half begun with shocking 2 goals for Trauma. After second goal I immediately replaced 3 worst players with new ones and since them we gained complete control over the game and we scored 4 goals and got a win. Nevertheless, this match could be quite a trauma for us!

Another league match and another draw... This time we were a better team but old demons returned and we lost our lead in last minutes. This is fifth league match in a row without win...

We're still on nice place in league table, but this situation can change quickly. We have only 2 points more than team on relegation-playoff-spot, so we desperately need a win to jump higher. I already saw that morale is slowly dropping, so I decided that maybe team meeting will help.

I think that it worked even better than I expected. I know hope that we grab our win quickly!