FM21? Completed it mate.
The end of my seventh feels like a natural place to stop with Vålerenga continuing to dominate, and there's some bonus Norwegian national team chat from the 2026 World Cup too.
Read on!
Transfers
The work put in to scouting externally and developing players internally means we've been able to massively punch above our weight as a club. A record £76m was made from selling players across the 2026 season, with a new club record sale of £34m on the horizon too.
Dawid Bugaj and Frederik Glinvad left the club for £18m and £17m, respectively, a profit of £31.2m for both players, after Bugaj had arrived from SPAL for £3.8m and Glinvad was signed on a free from FC Midtjylland. Those were our two biggest sales in January, while Tarjei Loen became the biggest fee we've received for one of our homegrown youth players so far.
He left for Inter for £14.5m in the mid-season window. The wonderkid is probably best deployed as a winger but he mostly played either on the left of a four-man defence or as a wing-back in the 3-3-2-1-1.
I say so far, because in-game the transfer of homegrown wonderkid American international keeper, Carlos Archer, hasn't happened yet. He's also joining Inter for a potential fee of £34m, making him the highest sale of the save to date. I'm sure you'll agree he's not bad at all.
His sale will bring the total for players sold under my management to £254.55m. I've splashed out on transfers where I've deemed it to be necessary, spending £62m across my tenure. The club is ending with £240m in the bank with not a lot to do with it still. Our facilities are maxed out, attendances aren't quite at the level required for a stadium expansion and there's only so much I've been willing to pay players. I'm sure if I let the AI take over they'd ruin it fairly quickly.
2026 Eliteserien
League Table
Headlines
Maximum points to finish the save! It was sheer domination from us this season, laying waste to everything in our way. We won the league after 23 matches, which is the earliest title win so far. Our 106 goals scored is a huge record for the Eliteserien. We scored four or more in 13 of our 30 league matches, scoring seven on two occasions as well against Ranheim and Mjøndalen.
Grinding out results is the mark of champions. Sometimes the way to grind out results and make a breakthrough is from a set piece, and we absolutely dominated them this season. We scored 16 goals from corners and 10 from indirect free kicks. There was four from direct free kicks too. A hallmark of our 4-2-4 formation is a lot of goals come from out wide, I’ve always been a believer in just get the ball into the box and anything can happen, and my side ran with that this season. They led the way in crosses completed with 356, 55 more than the 2nd placed side, odds. We had an average of 19.6 shots per game and by far the most shots and most shots on target in the league this season.
The 15 goals conceded doesn’t quite break our record of 12 from the 2024 season, but I’ll take it. We only conceded 193 shots all season, with just 81 of those going on target. Carlos Archer barely had anything to do on reflection.
Domestic Competitons
It wouldn’t have felt right to finish off the save any other way than with a domestic treble, so I’m glad we managed it.
Everything was largely comprehensive and there isn’t too much to say about it. After a few shakey moments early on across the domestic cup competitions, I’m glad we were able to start completely dominating them.
Continental Competition
It wasn’t a complete sea of green across the calendar year for the club. A home draw against Chelsea in the first leg of the Champions League first knockout round was promising but the uphill struggle was too much. They comfortably went through 4-2 on aggregate in last season’s competition. We hit the jackpot a little bit with this season’s Champions League group.
We swept up all before us to finish on maximum points and a goal difference of +19. The Intility Arena demolitions of Standard and Kyiv were an absolute joy to watch.
Bayern Munich were the team out of the hat this time for the first knockout round. We’ll never know what could’ve been on the continental competition front with this team. It always gets panned as a concept, but I would’ve liked to have had much more of a go at the Europa or Europa Conference League. I think we would’ve been in with a good shout of winning either of them.
A Look At - Albert Braut Tjåland
There was only going to be one man to look at in my final season at the club.
He broke his own Eliteserien goalscoring record this season, hitting 34 across the 30 matches on his way to being crowned Eliteserien Player of the Year. It was 43 across his 35 appearances in total for the season, not quite hitting the heights of his 2024 record of 47 in 48 appearances but that was helped by us not automatically qualifying for the Champions League group stage that season.
After joining at the end of my first season in charge he’s gone on to score 216 goals in 242 appearances for me. A quite incredible signing, an incredible player, he’s still only 22! What will he be like on FM22 I wonder?
The singling out could’ve been a whole host of players this season to be honest. Edvard Tagseth broke the seasonal assist record, laying on 22 goals for his teammates. Jørgen Strand Larsen started to properly repay some of that £9m outlay by hitting 29 goals in 40 appearances. 19-year-old Sakda Wongpradit had a breakout season too as the understudy striker, scoring 15 times in just over 2,000 minutes on the pitch. Carlos Archer and Julian Grøndal were rocks at the back and played well beyond their ages of just 19 and 21, respectively.
The Golden Generation
I titled my FM21 the Golden Generation because there was a group of very special Norwegians that stood out to me. It was them that made me decide I wanted to manage the national team alongside a club side.
As the save has gone on, it's been evident I was right. Kristoffer Ajer has been a rock at the back across his 94 caps, Sander Berge has been spectacularly solid in midfield in his 90 caps, Martin Ødegaard has been an assist machine in his 101 caps and Erling Haaland has an incredible 76 goals in his 88 caps. Others have emerged as standouts too. I gave Kristoffer Klaesson and Fredrik André Bjørkan their debuts and they now have 68 and 71 caps, respectively. Jens Petter Hauge has been a constant danger in his 68 caps no matter where he's played. Max Normann Williamsen was one of the main reasons I wanted to head to Norway for FM21 and he's reached a half-century of caps now too.
We failed to do ourselves justice at Euro 2020, going out in the second round against England. The 2022 World Cup was a better story, eventually finishing 3rd after being beaten by eventual winners, Brazil, in the semi final. 2023 brought a 3rd place finish in the Nations League too, beating France after losing out against Spain. The 2024 Euros eluded us as we headed out at the quarter final stage against France, who were eventually beaten in the final by Ukraine. The 2025 Nations League final saw us bring home the first ever bit of silverware for the nation. France and then the Netherlands were downed by Haaland which served as a warm up for this.
Norway are the champions of the world. Save complete, job done.
We weren't tested until we reached the quarter final stage. A quite frankly ridiculous match at the MetLife Stadium against Portugal ended 5-5 after extra time, with Bruno Fernandes equalising and completing his hattrick in the 119th minute. We squeezed through on penalties after that initial heartache. We got our revenge against England in the semi final, going through as 3-2 winners to meet Serbia in the final. Yeah, that's right I said Serbia. They'd beaten the Netherlands and France, both on penalties, so I was a little bit nervy heading into the big one.
I didn't need to be. Although Serbia pegged us back in the first half, a strong second half showing saw us secure the famous trophy. The final score was 4-1, with Ajer, Haaland, Patrick Berg and Oskar Siira Sivertsen on the scoresheet.
Six of the 14 players who played a part in the final were previous or current Vålerenga players under my management. What a moment.
Summary
In my introductory post I posed a few questions. Why hadn't "The Pride of Oslo" been competing for honours every season when the city is such a powerhouse compared to others in the country? Why haven't they been consistently bringing through talented generations of young players? Why haven't they been able to use some financial muscle to hoover up talented players from the rest of the sides in the country?
I'd like to think I've ticked all of those boxes. We're seven-time consecutive Eliteserien winners, five-time consecutive Norwegian Cup winners and six-time consecutive Norwegian Super Cup winners. Unfortunately I won't be here long enough to overhaul Rosenborg's 26 Eliteserien wins with Vålerenga sitting on 11, but I reckon we'd get there no bother.
We’ve brought through some incredible homegrown players and managed to snap up some talented youngsters from elsewhere in the country to bring them into the Vålerenga way of working early on in their careers. There’s been a constant conveyor belt of talent and if I was continuing the save then I’ve no doubt that would only get even better. I think selling a homegrown goalkeeper for £34m is almost the perfect time to call it quits on the save, and the game as a whole. Alongside that World Cup win for the national team, of course. Both achievements feel like vindications of the reason why I picked the nation, league and club for my FM21 save. I’m sure they’ll be plenty of quality Norwegians that pop up during everyone’s FM22 saves, I can’t wait to see them all.
For the first edition in a long time I’m not quite ready to leave this save behind. Who knows what’ll happen, especially with how average FM22 currently looks at first glance…
United to Prevent Suicide
Hopefully you haven’t just skipped over this final section. United to Prevent Suicide is a campaign aimed at breaking down the perceived barriers of talking about suicide, as a means of preventing it. Talking saves lives, and we should be comfortable talking about suicide to ensure we can do our upmost to prevent it. You can find out more information on the below website.