Bolton's mystery Norwegian defender transfer target named

Yesterday, there was plenty of speculation about a not-as-yet named Norwegian defender that Bolton Wanderers were chasing. Having been so used to buy players within England and Owen Coyle's regime not looking outside the normal channels of Premier League and Scottish Premier League players, we immediately speculated about the players at home. Add that to us not really watching the Norwegian Tippeligaen, and well, we didn't consider a Norwegian player playing in Norway.

The player in question was named by Daily Mirror writer Alan Nixon as one Jonatan Tollås, a central defender for Aalesund in the Norwegian Tippeligaen. Tollas is very young at 22 years old and stands at 6'2". For the sake of comparison, that's an inch taller than both Tim Ream and Sam Ricketts, the same height as Marcos Alonso and transfer target Craig Dawson, and four inches shorter than Zat Knight.

Tollas was born in Ålesund, Norway and, as previously mentioned, plays for his hometown club: Aalesunds FK. Tollas spent much of his youth career with Blindheim, a sports club that participates in volleyball, football, and handball. Their men's football team is in Norway's fourth division. Tollas moved to Aalesund in 2005 and made his league debut two years later in 2007.

For the first few years of his career, Tollas was averaging between 10 and 15 games per season (there are 30 games per season in the Tippeligaen). This last season was his breakout year for the club though as he played in all but one game, starting and going the full 90 minutes in 28 of those 29 appearances. In the 2011 season, Aalesund enjoyed success finishing fourth in the table and earned the chance to qualify for the Europa League. This last season wasn't as great, with Aalesund ending up in 11th place. Tollas started all four of Aalesund's Europa League matches this last year when they won 6-1 on aggregate against SK Tirana to qualify before losing 2-1 and 0-1 against Apoel Nicosia (who reached the Champions League quarter-finals in 2011/12 before going out to Real Madrid).

Tollas has earned caps for Norway at the U17, U18, U19, and U21 levels. The last cap came in August of 2012. His current deal runs until summer of 2014.

Nixon also says that Craig Dawson is still a very real transfer target for Dougie Freedman.