Mjondalen saved themselves by the very skin of their teeth and it was a fantastic achievement for a side that really looked destined for the drop for long parts of the season. Mjondalen were never able to defend slender leads, meaning that games they could and should have won often ended up as 1-1 draws or narrow defeats. Vegard Hansen often bemoaned fine margins, and while there is plenty of truth in that there were also instances where Mjondalen really didn't look like an Eliteserien side. The 5-4 defeat against Bodo/Glimt early on was kamikaze football and there were plenty of other examples where Mjondalen looked like they would end up on the wrong side of the dotted line.
But they saved in many respects their best performance to last in a 1-0 win over Valerenga which made sure they stayed out of the bottom three at the very last. It was a standard Mjondalen performance but this time they managed to keep that all elusive clean sheet and that proved to be the difference in the end.
It will be really interesting to see how Mjondalen approach the 2020 season. They will definitely be underdogs again and Hansen will at the very least demand that they are as competitive as they were in most of the games this season. But Mjondalen can't afford any false turns in regards to player investment, and everything has to click into place on a shoestring. That's why they will find it hard to keep three teams below them again for two successive top flight seasons. But you can bet anything you've got that they will try to do just that.
