Nacka’s Yard: Season 2 (2025)

Welcome back to Fuller FM, and to my Football Manager 2024 series with Nacka FC in the Swedish fourth tier.

In case you missed it, my first season was a success… well, kind of. We did win the trophy for the most Expected Goals and Expected Points in Division 2 Södra Svealand… but, er, we didn’t win promotion.

Now it’s 2025, and expectations are high. Can Nacka’s new signings bring us some actual silverware and take us up to the Ettan? Or am I going to have another nasty case of second-season syndrome?

PRE-SEASON TRANSFERS

After narrowly missing out on the play-offs last year, I cleared out most of the dead wood. Captain Andreas Hadenius‘ legs had gone, and he retired aged 33 to become the world’s worst director of football. Fellow centre-half Alexander Berntsson and misfiring forward Aziz Essaisi also moved on, and Simon Röse took his goalkeeping… ahem, talents elsewhere.

I was more disappointed to lose Saadoon Mohsin – a promising defensive midfielder who played 11 games last season. Unfortunately, Mohsin was dead-set on joining a bigger club, and signed for Eskilsminne in the Ettan Södra.

Thankfully, fellow rising star Kenan Nišić rejected advances from elsewhere to sign a new contract worth £35 per week, making him one of our highest-paid players. Kenan is already an established starter at centre-back and a Montenegro Under-21s international, and I’m looking forward to him continuing his development with us.

Thanks to a healthy new sponsorship deal bolstering our finances, I was able to increase my playing wage budget up to £600 per week, with a maximum wage of £40 per week. I brought in nine new players – eight free transfers and a loanee. Let’s take a closer look at six of them…

My priority was to sign a reliable and consistent shotstopper, and so I went for this Greek god. He’s got solid handling, agility and kicking, and his decision-making isn’t terrible either. If you’re wondering why my new goalkeeper is wearing the number 7 shirt, his full name is Christos Ronaldo Liantas.

Finding some good centre-halves was a bit trickier, as other clubs kept swooping in for our top targets as soon as we offered them contracts. That said, I am happy enough with the tall and experienced Marcus Eriksson (not the former F1 driver), who will be our new captain.

I tried taking Gustav Johanströmmer Hedin on loan for a second season, but Hammarby were not having it. The athletic and fit Anton Pärleholt will take on his right-back responsibilities, though he will miss the start of the season due to injury.

We have a pretty sturdy midfield engine, but just in case any part of that engine breaks down, I decided to call the AA. Albin Andersson arrives as one of our most technically gifted players (admittedly, the bar isn’t set very high) and his work rate is also admirable. He could be here for a while.

Up front, we have a brave and strong 19-year-old centre-forward named Albin Rickborg, who made a blistering start in pre-season – scoring five goals in four games. He will face competition from loanee Adham Hazime, who is a more natural finisher and also provides more of an aerial threat. Time will tell whether we have the best strikers in Division 2, but there’s no question that Rickborg and Hazime have THE best facial hair!

SQUAD REPORT

So here’s how our squad is shaping up now. I’ve definitely made more of an effort to give us more quality depth – particularly further up the pitch, so I feel like we’re looking good to challenge for promotion again.

The one question mark is over our defence. Our regular back four of Pärleholt, Eriksson, Nišić and left-back Elias Ziani looks pretty strong – indeed, they kept a clean sheet against Allsvenskan side Brommapojkarna in pre-season – but I’m not entirely happy with our other options.

It’s also not a great sign that our defenders have – on average – the WORST Decisions attributes in the division. So if any of them decide to do a Mika Biereth on us, you’ll know why.

At least I’m more confident in our aforementioned midfield engine. Success Nwosu may be 30 now, but he’s still a strong holding midfielder. Ismael Lindqvist has provided some much needed energy since his arrival last summer, and Tim Hauzenberger‘s attacking runs and penalty-taking make him a real threat as well.

These are the tactics that I hope will deliver us some success. I’ll mostly play a 4-3-3, with a focus on high-tempo and incisive counter-attacks. We will start most matches in a mid block, but will press higher up the pitch – and more intensely – if the situation dictates.

I also have a more positive 4-2-3-1 (not gegenpress), which I’ll switch to when we face much weaker opposition or are chasing a goal. Getting Ziani further up the pitch to utilise his crossing abilities will hopefully create more and better opportunities for Rickborg and Jammeh.

The bookies have made us odds-on favourites to win automatic promotion. We also have four players in the media dream XI – Pärleholt, Hauzenberger, Rickborg and winger Bilal Mohammed. To put that in perspective, NONE of our players were in that best XI at the start of last season.

Anything less than a play-off place will be a failure, but we cannot take anything for granted. Yo-yo club Assyriska expect to go straight back up after dropping out of the Ettan Norra last year. Gute could also challenge again after their defeat in the play-offs, which they had cruelly denied us with an injury-time equaliser on the final day.

But despite being one of the better teams in Division 2, we have again failed to qualify for the Svenska Cupen. I should probably add that the Cupen is played between seasons – not in a single calendar year like the league. If we want to guarantee our place in the Cupen for 2026/2027, we will need to get promoted this time…

FIRST HALF

…and that’s just the start we wanted.

We stormed to the top of the table after winning our first four games – scoring 13 goals without reply! Rickborg and Jammeh were on fire from the outset, and our new goalkeeper Liantas was particularly impressive when we shut out Assyriska.

Then we played our old foes Gute, who were once again in the mix for promotion.

It was the same old story. We went 1-0 up, dominated possession… and then some awful goalkeeping threw the game away. Thank heavens that Rickborg scored an injury-time equaliser to keep our unbeaten run intact.

We were briefly knocked off top spot by Sylvia, who’d won their first FIVE matches after rebuilding their team in pre-season. However, we reasserted our dominance with five wins out of our next six, even if we did get gradually worse with each passing game.

The only blip during that time was at home to Sylvia. Rickborg scored on the stroke of half-time after a great assist by Ilias Alaoui, who impressed after replacing the injured Mohammed on the left wing. But then Ziani gave away a soft second-half penalty, from which Sylvia equalised. It was their only shot on target in the entire game.

It’s weird that Nacka always struggle in big matches. I have no idea why we always struggle in big matches.

Still, we were on a high after 11 games unbeaten. The next team to visit our Fisksätra fortress were newly-promoted Mjölby AI, who sound like they should be Sweden’s answer to ChatGPT. What could possibly go wrong?

I’m starting to think CL7 is not the intelligent goalkeeper I thought he was.

Throw in another catastrophic defensive error by Nišić, and a world-class performance from Mjölby’s bang-average goalkeeper Bob Hedman (no relation to Magnus), and you have THIS.

What a way to lose our unbeaten record – and top spot.

Gute replaced us at the summit, but were then held 0-0 by Sylvia in their final game before the summer break. We took full advantage with a much more emphatic win over Västerhaninge, which meant…

…at the halfway stage, we were back in 1st place on goal difference. Hey, wait a minute! Weren’t we in this exact position LAST season? Let’s hope we don’t balls it up again in the second half.

Oh, and if you’re one of those Expected Points bros, then the stats say we ‘should’ be at least six points clear of everyone else.

Meanwhile, I got my first job interview offer… and ironically, it was from IFK Eskilstuna, whom I managed on Football Manager 2015! Obviously, there was no way I was abandoning the promotion favourites for a team that was battling to avoid relegation. I later had a more attractive offer from Gefle in the Superettan, but I still wasn’t leaving.

SECOND HALF

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I made very few changes to the Nacka squad in the summer transfer window. The only player to leave was one of my pre-season signings – backup holding midfielder Saikou Jawneh, who returned home to the Gambia after making only eight appearances for us.

The only player IN was a giant Iraqi loanee named Ahmad Saad Handal. I felt we needed a left-footed winger to give us something different. As well as being a decent crosser, Ahmad had massive jumping reach (he was 6ft 5in, for crying out loud!) and could also operate as a target man.

We were simply sizzling after the summer break, recording THREE big wins… and, ahem, a 0-0 home draw against Haninge where we briefly forgot how to score. I might have thrown some water bottles after that game.

Nevertheless, we remained on course for promotion ahead of a huge home clash with 2nd-placed Gute. You know what would be the perfect preparation for that game?

For one of my star players to get itchy feet! Ziani was upset that I rejected a pitiful offer of around £2,000 from Piteå, and a couple of his team-mates backed him up. Fortunately, the majority wanted Elias to stay, so I told him to grow up and concentrate on winning promotion.

Victory for Gute would have seen them leapfrog us into 1st place. With the match still on a knife’s edge after 72 minutes, disaster struck when Hazime gave away a penalty. However, CL7 pulled off a massive save… and then, nine minutes later, our wantaway whinger did THIS:

Ziani’s incredible assist for Mohammed had broken the deadlock. We had finally broken our Gute hoodoo and were now four points clear!

Of course, we missed about 20 chances in the very next game and barely scraped a draw at Enskede. Jammeh’s goals had almost completely dried up, but Rickborg bounced back from his poor form to earn us a couple of narrow wins over Rågsved and – more importantly – Sylvia. I’m sorry, Nan.

With five games to play, we were in a commanding position. Just two more wins would secure a play-off place. A third would wrap up automatic promotion, and the title.

Cue our penultimate home game, against mid-table Arameisk-Syrianska (good grief, there are A LOT of Assyrian diaspora teams in Sweden). We dominated the match from start to finish, suffocated their defence, created LOADS of chances…

…and somehow, we came within seconds of defeat. The Arameans twice took the lead through a penalty and a deflected free-kick, and if Hazime hadn’t popped up with a stoppage-time equaliser, this would have been another Mjölby-style fiasco.

If anyone thought we were bottling it, though, we proved them wrong by beating IFK Eskilstuna and Ljungsbro more comfortably. We now had a play-off place at worst, but just ONE more win from our remaining two away games would confirm us as champions.

Next up, a chance to exact revenge on Mjölby – and our goalkeeping nemesis Bob Hedman.

Rickborg didn’t faff around this time, giving us a 13th-minute lead with his 13th goal of the season. Mjölby’s square pitch gave our wingers a lot more space to exploit, but we could not build on that. We also had a few scares at our end before the final whistle gave us sweet relief.

Nacka FC had been promoted, with one game to spare! We would be playing in the Ettan Norra next year!

We got a guard of honour before the season finale at relegation-threatened Västerhaninge. I rested four players who were at risk of suspension, and a makeshift team could only manage a 2-2 draw, but I wasn’t really bothered.

So there you have it. Nacka were champions of Division 2 Södra Svealand with a record-equalling 63 points. We were five clear of Gute, who had to settle for the play-offs (again) and lost in the first round (again). You love to see it!

Our promotion was built on an incredible away record, picking up 33 goals and 33 points from just 13 games. Indeed, had it not been for that ONE horrible home game against Mjölby in June, we would have completed the entire season without defeat.

SEASON REVIEW

But seriously, what a season this has been! Yes, we did kinda fall over the line in the last few weeks, but there’s no doubt we were the best team in our division.

Most of our regular starters got an average rating above 7.00. The only ones who didn’t were Nišić and Nwosu, but we all know that FM likes to screw over defensive midfielders and centre-backs who don’t score.

Our Player of the Year – for the second season in a row – was Yusupha Jammeh. The pacey winger flew out of the traps in the first half of the season and actually scored a few goals, though his form collapsed over the summer. Thankfully, he found his mojo again just in time to get a couple of crucial assists in the closing stages.

On the left flank, Mohammed helped himself to eight assists. I’m not sure if Bilal has the technical ability to step up a division, but I’m happy to give him another season.

In terms of next season, I’ll keep faith in most of the team that got us promoted – but there are areas where we can improve.

For example, while we had the most shots on target in our division (193), we also had the third-lowest shot conversion rate (just 11%). Our top scorer Rickborg is a decent if not a great finisher, but we definitely need to be more clinical in the final third. Some extra midfield creativity wouldn’t go amiss either.

I’m a bit happier with our defence, which kept the most clean sheets (17), gave up the fewest shots on target (50) AND had the lowest opposition conversion rate (9%). Both CL7 and backup goalkeeper Kevin Blennestrand have been solid between the posts, despite having their injury issues. The full-backs aren’t too shabby either.

The board have promised a big wage budget increase too, which gives me plenty of room to add more quality to the squad. Survival will obviously be our main objective in the Ettan Norra… but if we can continue our incredible away record, who knows how far we can go?

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t already, you can follow me on Threads and/or Bluesky to stay notified when a new blog post goes live.

I’ll be back in about two weeks’ time, with a summary of Nacka’s first season in the Ettan Norra. That might be enough time to grow my sideburns like Adham Hazime… though it’s probably not enough to go full-on Mungo Jerry.