Sarpsborg looked to build on the foundations of an excellent last season and kicked the campaign in the best possible manner, seeing off champion Rosenborg to pick up a 1:0 win at the start. They indeed looked deep in terms of squad and quite explosive in attack.
Yet Geir Bakke was at times finding it hard to balance defence and attack and the team often struggled to maintain consistency. They had a poor run of five games without a win but then bounced back well in May to win four games in a row. Patrick Mortensen was once again proving to be their leading man in attack but the worry for the manager was that he struggled to get the best out of any of his new signings.
Players like Ronnie Schwartz and Harmeet Singh were expected to be key cogs of the team but none of them really settled into the side and often Bakke had to tweak the starting 11 and mix and match. The team remained in a relatively good position near the top of the table until they complete collapsed in terms of results in August. They went on a hugely disappointing and deflating run of seven losses in a row as the squad bore the brunt of a heavy schedule, with unexpected European progress adding games to the schedule.
Yet Bakke managed to steady the ship a bit in the closing month of the season and Sarpsborg did not lose any of the last five games in the league. Overall, it has been a pretty deflating season for the team as they struggled for consistency and never really found their best 11, even if they have quite a talented squad.
Yet all of that has been overshadowed by the quite astounding European campaign that Sarpsborg have enjoyed, and is still going on. They have beaten a number of more resourceful and experienced teams at the international level since the summer and deserve all the credit for their improbable achievements, including the the fact that they still have a chance to go to the las-32 of the Europa League with still on game left to play.
