Welcome back to “Nacka’s Yard”, where my lower-league adventure in Sweden has so far been going very well… perhaps too well. If you missed our Superettan debut last season, Nacka FC didn’t just stay up – we came quite close to what would have been a third consecutive promotion!
Nacka’s incredible rise on FM24 has also come to the attention of the club’s real-life director (and co-founder) Salih Shala, who posted a lovely comment on my Season 3 summary a few weeks ago. As an FM blogger, it’s always a special and humbling moment when the club you’re managing in the virtual world shows their support in the real world – just like Lyn did on FM19, and Cambrian & Clydach on FM21.
This has already been a wonderful journey, and it has helped me rediscover why I love playing Football Manager…
…but now we get to Season 5, in which I rediscover why I HATE playing Football Manager.
PRE-SEASON PROBLEMS
I’m afraid to say that the winter of 2027/2028 was not much fun. This has been THE most stressful off-season so far at Nacka.
We’ve encountered that classic FM issue where we’ve risen too high too quickly, and our reputation hasn’t caught up. It’s becoming harder to find players who can improve our squad without demanding a king’s ransom in wages – and those who do often sign for a lower-league team because they have a “stronger squad”.
Meanwhile, my assistant manager is refusing to sign a new contract, which means he’s now working month-to-month and could suddenly walk out at any time. I would replace him, but it’s virtually impossible to hire new staff members, because EVERYONE wants to be paid moon money to even consider joining us.
The only ‘new’ member of our backroom staff is vice-captain Stefan Lindmark, who now combines his midfield duties with being our first Head of Youth Development. Stefan was determined to set a shining example for our younger players…
…so, of course, he went and broke our goalkeeper’s leg.
Left-back Arvid Wiklund then suffered a slipped disc and was ruled out for three months. Injuries have not been kind to us in pre-season.
Anyway, let’s talk about some of the new signings I eventually brought in.
Say hello to our new trio of loanees. Coming from senior affiliate Hammarby, Ivar Steggo Forsse has great aerial reach and is arguably the best goalkeeper we’ve ever had. Ayoub Hussein is an energetic midfield runner with impressive technique. And lastly, Finnish centre-back Erik Persson is… cheap.
Unfortunately for Erik, it’s more likely that Yusuf Aksoy will be Victor Tjeder‘s centre-back partner this season. The big and aggressive stopper was an Allsvenskan player last season, in that he made one appearance for Degerfors… in the Cup…. as a substitute.
I signed three Norwegian teenagers, though only one has gone straight into the first-team. Ex-Stabæk defender Ken Eilif Bredsdorff Hotvedt is a resilient right-back with top-flight potential (forget what his profile says – he’s NOT a centre-back).
I wouldn’t normally sign a player with such low Teamwork, but with such great key attributes, I’m happy to take a gamble on him.
Another big name joining our ranks is Micheé Kabady Kantokoski – a pacey and clinical forward who will provide cover for Kevin Larsson Ajayi on the left wing. Micheé is joined by two of last season’s loanees who’ve now signed permanent deals. Winger Noel Wall is one of them, and the other is… this guy.
We have played Täby like a fiddle.
We sold Elias Ziani to Täby for £12,500 in summer 2026, loaned him straight back, and then took him on loan for another season (for free!). Then Täby got relegated, Ziani’s contract expired… and now Nacka’s favourite left-back is back at the Fisksätra on a new two-year deal!
In case you’ve lost count, Elias is now technically on his FOURTH stint at Nacka. He’ll have more debuts than Trevor Benjamin at this rate!
SEASON PREVIEW
And so, after an unusual Fuller FM transfer window in which I didn’t replace half the squad for no reason, this is how we are shaping up for our second Superettan season.
We still have three of my original players under contract. Kevin Blennestrand will be our backup keeper again once he recovers from injury, while Kenan Nišić has returned from his exile in Montenegro to provide emergency defensive cover. We also still have record appearance-maker Tim Hauzenberger, who is set to remain a regular in midfield.
I hope our new defensive recruits will take some of the burden off these boys’ shoulders. Captain Tjeder and midfield anchor Hadi Noori are not the most consistent parts of our spine, but they’ve been working hard on their weaknesses over the winter. And then there’s Ziani, who rarely lets us down at left-back.
I’m also expecting big things from Finlay Neat, who had a lean 2027 but has shown signs of his old form since being moved to an Advanced Playmaker role. However, I doubt we will average two goals per game again this season. Larsson Ajayi has been moaning about wanting a big pay rise all winter, while Albin Rickborg struggled to hit the target in pre-season.
My tactical tweaking continues. I’ve gone for a bit more defensive solidity in our 4-3-3, with my players being asked to regroup to provide more protection against counter-attacks.
But I’m aware that you can’t be too cautious on FM24. I’ll also be deploying a high-pressing 4-2-3-1 at home against ‘weaker’ opposition… which probably won’t happen very often, now I come to think of it. This is still a work in progress, folks.
Despite finishing 4th last season, the media still don’t have much faith in us. We are once again the overwhelming favourites to be relegated. (Like I said, our reputation still hasn’t caught up.)
I don’t think we’ll face a relegation battle this term – but despite having an arguably better squad than 12 months ago, I actually reckon we’re in for a tougher season.
The other Superettan teams should be more aware of our counter-attacking threat and will surely leave themselves less open at the back. It’ll be up to us to find other ways through their defences.
And don’t forget, we also had the Svenska Cupen to occupy ourselves with. The Group Stage for that competition was played slap-bang in the middle of pre-season… so, how did we get on?
CUPEN
We made an incredible start, shutting out Allsvenskan side Kalmar away from home before Hauzenberger gave us a historic victory! Unfortunately, we followed it up with a disappointing home defeat to Utsiktens.
Our Cupen adventure ended on another 2-1 loss, albeit a more valiant one against our senior affiliate Hammarby. We could have taken more from that game until Lindmark got sent off (again) for trying to break another player’s leg (again).
My next youth intake is going to be full of aggressive bald thugs, isn’t it?
Only the group winners qualify for the Quarter Finals, but seeing as this was our debut season in the Cupen, I can’t complain about a 3rd-place group finish. Our bank manager was also pleased that we made £250,000 in gate receipts from the Kalmar and Hammarby games – money that would soon be put to good use.
It’s about time. You can’t be a professional football club and train on a cabbage patch forever.
Obviously, our finances have taken a big hit – but if we can produce another solid league campaign, we should make enough prize money to cover that.
INJURIES, INJURIES AND INJURIES – OH MY!
Our first league match was at home to relegated Örebro. After a slow start, we took a 2-1 lead and were on course for another famous win. And then Steggo showed why he was “the best goalkeeper we’ve ever had”.
I swear he is better than this, honest.
Not to worry, though, as we won five of our next six games and shot up to 2nd! We were also 1-0 up at early frontrunners Sirius, until Ivar was undermined by some typically Nacka defending.
And the injury problems didn’t let up either. It seemed like we were losing a regular starter every single week!
First, Ziani sprained his knee ligaments, which meant centre-half Rasmus Møller had to play at left-back for a few weeks. We then lost both our right-wingers to injury – Enow straining his back, and then Wall twisting his knee just days after getting a couple of assists at GIF Sundsvall. Naturally.
But hey, at least Blennestrand’s on his way back from that broken l-
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? Two goalkeepers suffering the same injury on the same day!
Steggo was thankfully still fit, and he was finally producing the goalkeeping excellence expected of him. Then, in our final match before the summer break, we were at home to relegation-threatened Oddevold.
Despite Oddevold’s very early red card, we somehow gifted them the lead TWICE, went 3-2 up, conceded a THIRD goal, and didn’t wrap up the victory until the final few minutes. Rickborg probably saved his team-mates from the water bottle treatment.
But after all that drama, Nacka went into the summer break…
…top of the Superettan!
That was no thanks to Rickborg, though. Albin had only scored twice all season, and he’d been overshadowed by his backup striker Aidan Zaar Ibrahimaga, who led the league with EIGHT goals!
So, obviously, Aidan twisted his ankle and would miss our first two games after the interval. Yeah, I saw that coming…
CRUEL SUMMER
…and I saw this coming as well. Sanel Hasić had been my assistant manager since the start – but after stubbornly refusing to sign a new deal, he inevitably jumped ship to manage FC Stockholm in the Ettan Norra.
And then our Director of Football quit a few weeks later! After 13 years at the club, Salih Shala had decided he wanted to be Rågsved’s manager instead! How could you do this to us, Salih?!
Hasić was replaced with Aleksandar Tasevski, who earned a promotion after three-and-a-half years on our coaching staff. Of course, we now needed another coach, but we still had that ridiculous bug where unemployed staff members were making more demands than Lady Gaga.
In the end, I brought in a random newgen on £300 per week just to fill up the numbers. His name is Sam, he’s from Bristol, and he’s absolutely rubbish.
Oh, and that training facility upgrade was completed in July. We had spent 750 grand to upgrade them from Basic to… Below Average. What was the point in that?!
But there was even more misery to come. This was THE worst run of results I’ve had on FM for a long time.
Our collapse began at Sandviken, where we twice lost the lead before conceding a 91st-minute winner. After getting lucky against Mjällby, we shipped four goals at rock-bottom Trelleborg, and then forgot how to score at the other end.
I hoped a mid-season clearout would reverse our fortunes. Goalkeeping number 7 Christos Liantas was sold, Nišić was released, and three more fringe players were loaned out until the end of their contracts. Persson was recalled by Mariehamn, but I brought in four more loanees.
I loaned a couple of Norwegian midfielders – neither of them were very good (indeed, one of them got recalled after just nine games). At least we had better fortunes with pacey winger Winston Svensson Johansson and beefy target man Kudret Fırat, who each improved a flagging attack.
But results did not improve. Five home defeats in a row. SEVEN league defeats in a row. 11 league defeats out of 13. We even made heavy weather of Ettan Södra leaders Värnamo in the Cupen.
Though spirits were still surprisingly high, nothing I tried was working tactically. We were tumbling down the table, out of the promotion running, and into a desperate battle against relegation.
On the plus side, we weren’t getting big injuries every week anymore! That’s something, right?
With six games to go, we were perilously close to the relegation play-offs. If we couldn’t turn things around quickly, a return to the Ettan – and financial disaster – would surely loom.
BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
If we were going down, I wanted us to at least go down swinging. We switched to a full-on direct, high-pressing 4-4-2 – like if Tony Pulis and Jürgen Klopp had a lovechild (now there’s a thought). The run-in began at home to fellow strugglers Gefle, in a match we quite simply had to win…
…and we smashed ’em.
I wasn’t bothered about our xG underperformance; the main thing was that all our strikers had rediscovered what goals were. Steggo had also remembered how to prevent goals…
…and he instantly forgot about that at Oddevold, conceding the same long-range goal to the same player twice. That nearly dealt a huge blow to our survival hopes, but we somehow came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2.
But then we lost tamely at home to Sandviken, before our 4-4-2 was destroyed by Mjällby’s 4-3-3 (an FM story as old as time). Fortunately, we bounced back in our final home game – a 2-1 win that relegated Trelleborg and secured our survival.
We eventually finished six points clear of the relegation play-offs, in 9th place. After four consecutive top-four finishes, this was my first major struggle at Nacka – and honestly, I was just relieved that we survived.
SEASON REVIEW
“First half, good. Second half, not so…” Yes, Sven, we get the idea.
I’ve endured more than enough mid-season collapses in my Football Manager life, but that was one of the worst yet. We were on a roll before the summer break, so how did it all fall apart so spectacularly? I have one theory.
We have a VERY young squad, finishing the season with only FOUR players aged 25+. Elder statesman Lindmark (34) is a human time-bomb nowadays, and our next-oldest player Møller (28) is not really strong enough to be an effective centre-half. That leaves Aksoy and Hauzenberger (both 26) as our only remotely useful ‘old’ guys.
It’s no accident that the Superettan’s least experienced team had serious problems with maintaining consistency and staying calm under pressure. FMers love to write players off as soon as they hit their 30s, but there’s much to be said for having some stable old pros in the dressing room.
I will need to bring in a few more wiser heads in the winter transfer window. To misquote Alan Hansen, “You can’t win anything with JUST kids.”
Lack of experience notwithstanding, hardly any Nacka players covered themselves in glory. Our only two players to get an average rating of at least 7.00 were both loanees. We have a chance to sign Hussain on a free transfer this winter… but knowing FM24, it will be almost impossible to bring Winston back for a second loan spell. Oh well.
And yes, I finally admit it… Steggo wasn’t as good as I thought he was. I can’t remember having such an inconsistent goalkeeper whose performances were either absolutely brilliant or utterly hopeless – with literally nothing in between!
In fairness, Ivar was frequently exposed by one of the league’s leakiest defences. We were particularly soft at centre-back, where Tjeder’s poor tackling and Aksoy’s weak heading made them particularly vulnerable. I will have to recruit significant improvements in that position this winter.
Up front, Aidan finished the season with 10 league goals, though only two of those were after the summer break. Even so, he will probably lead the line more consistently next term, especially if we can find a club brave (or gullible) enough to spend big money on Rickborg.
Despite getting just six goal contributions this season, Enow was voted Fans’ Player of the Year for a second time. Zak actually lost his starting place at right-back to Wall, who got six assists – the joint-highest with Ziani. Getting more out of our wide players will be vital if we’re going to come back stronger next year.
I’m so glad that rotten season is over… but we go again.
“Nacka’s Yard” will return in about a fortnight’s time, when we attempt to make it third time lucky in the Superettan. In the meantime, you can find me on Threads and BlueSky.
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