Solskjaer's friendship with controversial agent worrying?

In case you didn't see it in a thread from yesterday:

"Arriving in British football with a strong managerial reputation thanks to his exploits with the Norweigan national team, Egil Olsen is a man now best remembered in this country for leading Wimbledon to Premier League relegation in his one year at the helm.

It was the beginning of their much publicised demise, which eventually led to the club as we knew it going out of existence. The manager, who was often referred to at the time as the “football professor”, due to his reliance on football science – something which was completely out of the norm back in the 90s – brought four fellow countrymen into the club: Tore Pedersen, Martin Andresen, Kjetil Waehler and Lyn Andreas Lund – two of which joined the Dons from Molde. Ring any bells?

Pedersen would spend four seasons at the London club, though the other three Norweigan misfits made a combined total of 32 appearances between them, with many Wimbledon supporters putting the club’s relegation down to Olsen’s failure to recruit the right players.

Vinnie Jones would famously go on to say that his only regret about the now 71-year-old’s departure from the club was the fact he “never got a chance to chin him”. While it was another Welshman, Ben Thatcher, that Olsen claimed was his favourite player at the time.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has received some criticism in the past few days following the signing of Jo Inge Berget – the Cardiff City manager’s third recruit from former club Molde. Berget joins Magnus Wolff Eikrem and Mats Moller Daehli in the Welsh capital, with goalkeeper Orjan Nyland also expected to make the move from the Scandinavian club before Friday night’s deadline.

Though they may be going down a similar route to the infamous Wimbledon side of the late 90′s, it would be unfair to criticise Solskjaer for bringing in players he is homely with. What is worrying, however, is the fact that all these players mentioned, including former Manchester United star OGS, share the same controversial agent: Jim Solbakken.

A quick Google search brings back rather ‘interesting’ results. “Solbakken investigated by FIFA”, the first returned article reads; “Is football agent Jim Solbakken a bandit?” another Norweigan publications asks. The latest, and most relevant piece, points to the fact that Solskjaer has now recruited 11 of Solbakken’s listed talents. All of these transfers have taken place over the baby-faced assassin’s three years in management.

Respected German journalist, Raphael Honigstein, wrote in his weekly Guardian column recently that Solskjaer’s halo was beginning to slip – not because of the fact he took up the opportunity to work with the equally controversial Bluebirds owner Vincent Tan, but because of the 40-year-old’s willingness to continue working closely with Solbakken.

The two men have never made a secret of their close friendship, which, in business terms, ended in 2008 when Solskjaer hung up his Manchester United playing boots. At the time, Ole Gunnar took the decision to sell his shares in the duo’s joint-venture Solution AS – shares which Solbakken reportedly bought.

The reasoning behind why Solskjaer sold these shares was simply down to the fact that the Norweigan didn’t want to be caught up in speculation about tinkering with money. If the duo had kept the venture in place, then money from player sales – such as the deals which saw Eikrem, Daehli and Berget move to the Premier League – would end up in both Solskjaer and Solbakken’s pockets – any speculation of which has now ended with the City manager’s decision to sell his shares in Solution AS.

Linking this back to Wimbledon, it was another Norweigan, Bjorn Rune Gjelsten, who was acting as chairman at the time along none other than Sam Hammam. Ironically, the two watched on back in 1999 as their team beat Cardiff City in the League Cup in front of less than 3,000 fans – the club’s lowest attendance in a season that eventually led to relegation. Gjelsten had a part to play in the controversial moving of the club from its home in London – where it had been since 1889 – to Milton Keynes where the club would be rebranded as the MK Dons. Kjell Inge Rokke was also a financial backer at the time – a man born and raised in Molde.

Of course, some context is needed. Cardiff City are currently bottom of the Premier League table, with time running out to bring in new recruits. Solskjaer has this week openly admitted the three Norweigan recruits are not for the present, but instead for the future – a manager building for life in the second-tier, perhaps?

Many City supporters will hope that Solskjaer doesn’t go down the same route as Egil Olsen, though in the same week that the ex-Red Devils player hit out at agents in a press-conference, it’s his own friendly relationship with another agent that could cause more harm than good in the long-term."

I do think a lot of the similarities are conincidental. Daehli clearly has talent and Eikrem and Nyland are highly rated. I can't comment on Berget however. The relationship between Solbakken and OGS could be seen as shady but until something comes out that's proven, I won't think about it. All I care about is results.

I don't know how many football agents there are in Norway, but I can't imagine there are that many. The best agents will represent the best players and given the pedigree of OGS as a player, it is to be expected that he would be associated with the best.

Okay, he's traded 11 players through one agent............how many other purchases or sales through other agents happened over the same period and what were the values of the players concerned?

As the point about the Norwegians at Wimbledon, there are plenty of instances of foreign coaches mis-firing in the formative days of the PL......Dr Jozef Venglos at Villa and Christian Gross at Spurs are two that spring to mind......but I don't recall damning the entire Czech and Swiss nations on the back of their failures.

I've commented this a lot in this forum, and as I've said before this link is not good at all. For Cardiff and Cardiff supporters this link is very fresh and views might lack history. The way they worked in Norway was really really bad, but I guess it wont be possible in Cardiff. The way it worked in Norway, was as if Jose Mourinho's best friend was a british agent, he would sign young talents with few years left in their contract. Then they would refuse to sign new contracts with the smaller clubs that they spent their entire career in and go to Chelsea with little or no compensation to the former club.

Working with people you know can be assuring and is not negative. As long as signings are good and in a professional way it's no problem. The problem would, for Cardiff, be if Solskjær signed poor players from Solbakken just so Solbakken would make money. The signings so far are good signings for the future and would be hard to say that are bad or just so Solbakken can make money. Berget, Eikrem and Dæhli are all highly rated young players that are likely to hold a high BPL standard in the future.

To conclude, the link between Solskjær and Solbakken has not been bad for Cardiff yet, and might never be. The link in the past has been gray at least.

ludd wrote:I've commented this a lot in this forum, and as I've said before this link is not good at all. For Cardiff and Cardiff supporters this link is very fresh and views might lack history. The way they worked in Norway was really really bad, but I guess it wont be possible in Cardiff. The way it worked in Norway, was as if Jose Mourinho's best friend was a british agent, he would sign young talents with few years left in their contract. Then they would refuse to sign new contracts with the smaller clubs that they spent their entire career in and go to Chelsea with little or no compensation to the former club.

Working with people you know can be assuring and is not negative. As long as signings are good and in a professional way it's no problem. The problem would, for Cardiff, be if Solskjær signed poor players from Solbakken just so Solbakken would make money. The signings so far are good signings for the future and would be hard to say that are bad or just so Solbakken can make money. Berget, Eikrem and Dæhli are all highly rated young players that are likely to hold a high BPL standard in the future.

To conclude, the link between Solskjær and Solbakken has not been bad for Cardiff yet, and might never be. The link in the past has been gray at least.

Well put