Welcome back to “Nacka’s Yard”, where it’s now Season 8 – The Ocho. Or perhaps we should say “Åttan”, seeing as we’re in Sweden.
I’m afraid that Season 7 was not a lucky one for us. We forgot how to score, our goalkeeper forgot what his gloves were for, and we also said farewell to our young Paraguayan hotshot Luis Mendoza.
There’s been a mini-rebuild and a tactical rethink ahead of the 2031 season, which will be our fifth in the Superettan. Perahps this is the year Nacka FC finally make it into the Allsvenskan?
WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN (OR TWO)
After last season’s attacking woes, I was tempted to rip up the whole squad and start again. Cooler heads prevailed, and misfiring forwards Micheé Kabady Kantokoski and Aidan Zaar Ibrahimaga were the only big names to leave.
Club stalwarts Tim Hauzenberger, Noel Wall and Elias Ziani could easily have been released, and likewise our captain Fabian Falkstrand Ransjö and his centre-back partner Niklas Håkansson. But I’m far too aware about the perils of changing too much too soon, so I kept all five of them around for experience and stability.
Our much-maligned Moroccan goalkeeper Mounir El Bassil is also staying for another season. He will officially join FC Utrecht for £250,000 in July, but will immediately return to us on loan for the rest of the year. Let’s hope Mounir can actually make a few saves before he says goodbye.
El Bassil isn’t the only North African at Nacka this year. He’s been joined by a couple of exciting teenage talents from the Pirámide Academy in Egypt.
First off, we were alerted to a pacey, hard-working, clinical finisher named Ahmed Fouad. Though he’s naturally an out-and-out striker, I see him as the new Mendoza and am retraining him as a left inside-forward. You’ll understand why later.
Noting that Fouad might have some problems adapting to life in Sweden, I looked into bringing in one of his team-mates to keep him company. I really liked the look of Hazem Reda – a right-sided midfielder by trade, but a skilful and energetic mezzala in the making. Trust the process.
Here’s the guy who will actually lead our attack this season. 24-year-old Noel Sergel is the latest AIK castaway to rebuild his career at Nacka. A decent finisher with head and feet, he can also hold the ball up and play in his team-mates. I was looking for a physical deep-lying forward, and this guy fits the mould.
His backup will be beefy target man Kudret Fırat, who had a short loan spell with us in 2028 – scoring three goals in eight matches. Though Kudret couldn’t make the grade at IFK Göteborg, I believe his aerial threat and big-game mentality can come in very handy for us.
And finally, here are a couple of defensive loanees. Hammarby prospect Mårten Swedlund is a fearless and determined left-back who can also play in a holding midfield role.
Also coming into our backline is Häcken’s young no-nonsense centre-half Erik Melin. Here’s a fun fact about Erik: he was born in a town called Ale. “Skål!”
SQUAD REPORT
Here’s your Nacka squad for the 2031 Superettan season. Note how most of our highest-rated players (in terms of ability and potential) are now overseas signings. There’s always been a cosmopolitan feel about this club, but now it’s even more obvious.
Another promising import – Icelandic winger Aron Gauti Lárusson – has joined Tromsdalen on loan to gain some experience this year. Defensive midfielder Furkan Öztürk has likewise been loaned out again, but the 19-year-old youth graduate will need to perform well if he’s going to have a long-term future here.
César Gamarra has worked so tirelessly and impressively at right-back that he’s become our most valuable player and has already extended his contract by an extra year. Meanwhile, centre-half Alexis Fonteneau continues to make steady progress both physically and mentally.
And this could be a big year for Ayoub Hussein. The talented midfield runner has struggled with injuries in recent seasons, but a lighter training regime – and a change of role – could hopefully unlock his potential as a creative playmaker. Again, trust the process.
When you’re stuck for tactical ideas, don’t be afraid to ask for help. That’s what I did at the end of last season, when I posted my tactics on the Sports Interactive forums and sought some advice on how to make us more potent on the attack.
All that led to me stripping down the tactical instructions. No more needlessly running at defenders. No more disrupting our rhythm by playing for set-pieces. And no more restrictions on how our keeper distributes the ball.
I’ve also rejigged our midfield and attacking roles, with a Deep-Lying Forward at the heart of our attack. The plan is that he can form some incisive passing triangles with the winger and mezzala on the right, and with the playmaker and inside-forward on the left.
The ‘Control A’ tactic will be my go-to for most of our matches, though I also have a ‘Control B’ that basically inverts the Mezzala’s and Winger’s duties. The ‘Breaker’ is – as the name suggests – for breaking down stubborn three-man defences.
Meanwhile, the media are finally starting to take our Superettan hopes a bit more seriously. We’re 33-1 to get promoted, but most importantly, we are projected to finish above the relegation play-off places. It only took us four years of mostly mid-table finishes to get to this point!
But I won’t be satisfied with mid-table this time. We have some real quality going forward now, and once our Team Cohesion goes up, we should be at least be able to challenge for a top-three position.
Pre-season results have certainly been encouraging. We have scored plenty of goals, and even managed a 2-2 home draw against Allsvenskan champions Malmö! We also got a favourable draw in the Cupen Group Stage, giving me hope that we could potentially qualify for the Quarter Finals.
CUPEN
Well… this was fun.
We were 2-0 down at home to Västerås at half-time, thanks to El Bassil conceding twice from two shots on target. His replacement Alexandros Iliopoulos conceded a third goal early in the second half, and we were staring at a Fisksätra thrashing.
Then the Noels House Party came to our rescue. A debut goal from Sergel and a late brace from Wall saw us come back from 3-0 behind and somehow save a point!
Next up was a valiant 2-1 defeat at Djurgården, who secured top spot with a game to spare. It kinda felt like a missed opportunity, as Djurgården had an early second-half red card, but £200,000 in gate receipts will do very nicely, thank you.
We wrapped up our Cupen campaign with an unconvincing win over third-tier FC Stockholm, with Sergel scoring our only goal.
For the second season in a row, we finished 2nd in our Cupen group. But after a mixed bag of results, I had no idea what to expect when the Superettan kicked off.
FIRST HALF
I certainly didn’t expect us to score 26 goals in our first 11 matches!
We burst out of the traps quicker than a greyhound at Romford Dogs, winning four of our first five games to go top of the table. Fouad made an impressive start to his Nacka career, getting five goals and four assists as an Inside Forward, but he was completely overshadowed by another of our new signings.
No, your eyes aren’t lying. Sergel scored TEN goals in his first eight league matches! We didn’t have a single player reach double figures last season, but he had already done it by the middle of May. The last of those goals, against pacesetters IFK Värnamo, was the pick of the bunch.
Such beautiful passing triangles.
On the flip side, since shutting out Utsiktens on the opening day, we hadn’t kept a single clean sheet in 10 matches – conceding 21 goals. Our opponents had scored from 17% of their shots against us – a figure that rises to an alarming 40% if you only consider shots on target.
The highest match rating either of our goalkeepers had during that run was 6.6. El Bassil’s average rating was 6.56; Iliopoulos was on a pathetic 6.20. I haven’t seen two goalies BOTH play this badly since Wojciech Szczesny and Łukasz Fabiański were at Arsenal!
Look… it’s always easy to blame the man between the posts. Fonteneau and Gamarra were each having underwhelming seasons too, and my quest to find a defensive midfield role that actually defended the midfield continued.
Our defence was especially leaky on the road, losing three away games straight. That rotten run started at Falkenberg, where we went 1-0 up after 13 seconds, then 2-0 up after five minutes… and then 3-2 DOWN by half-time. We eventually lost 4-2.
Our poor away form left us in 4th place going into the summer break. We would surely tumble further unless I brought in some proper defenders.
SECOND HALF
Renewing Fabian’s contract was a mistake. Having proven himself utterly incapable of winning any headers, our skipper was banished to Denmark’s third division on a free transfer. Hadi Noori took on the captaincy full-time, and Gamarra was promoted to vice-captain.
El Bassil completed his £250,000 move to Utrecht in July, but of course, he would stay here on loan until next year. We also wouldn’t have to pay a single penny of his wages anymore (thank goodness for small mercies). Iliopoulos also departed on a more immediate basis, as we welcomed in a new goalkeeper.
Daniel Henareh had a pretty good half-season with Norrby, which convinced me to pay a club-record £5,000 to bring him over here. Unlike Mounir, Dan is actually more flexible than a cruise liner, though his Concentration is a cause for concern. Eh, I’m sure he’ll be fine.
Our last signing this year was another Hammarby loanee – teenage Rwanda international Patrick Mugabo, who would provide more depth in defence, midfield and defensive midfield.
After being shut out at home by Trelleborg in our first match following the summer break, I felt that we needed more than just a new keeper. I noted that while we were winning most of our tackles, we weren’t making a lot of tackles in the first place. Our lack of aggression was leading to less possession – and more opportunities for the opposition.
So I changed the Trigger Press to ‘More Often’, and instructed my players to ‘Get Stuck In’. We won 10 of our next 11 matches, albeit most of them were by a single goal.
Worryingly, we needed to come from behind in six successive away games. I had to switch to a 4-4-2 to save four points against Utsiktens and Oddevold, who both used that blasted ultra-defensive 5-3-2 with wing-backs. We even had major scares against Ettan minnows Karlbergs BK in the Cupen, and table-proppers Brage in the league.
But the most dramatic comebacks were still to come. We were 2-0 down at title rivals IFK Värnamo before battling back with a 90th-minute Bar Benitah equaliser. We also trailed Västerås by the same score until two goals in the final three minutes extended our unbeaten run to 14 matches!
So Henareh was not the answer to our problems. Even with a new goalie, our defence still sucked. At least Sergel and Fouad were still banging in goals to grind out those precious points.
That fantastic run sent us top of the Superettan – and six points clear of 3rd-placed Falkenberg – with five games remaining. With Nacka on the cusp of reaching the Allsvenskan, what could possibly go wrong?
THE RUN-IN
How about El Bassil breaking his arm, just as he was enjoying his best run of form in two years?
And how about Melin getting recalled by Häcken because I wasn’t playing him as a No-Nonsense Centre-Back… even though I was literally playing him mostly as a No-Nonsense Centre-Back! (I could go on about how much FM’s stupid promise mechanics suck, but I’ll save that for another day.)
And after narrowly beating 4th-placed Mjällby to effectively secure a top-three finish, the wheels fell off. We needed another late equaliser to save a point at Trelleborg, but then our 16-game unbeaten run finally came to a halt.
Back-to-back 1-0 defeats against Öster and Degerfors. Enow missed an injury-time penalty in the first game; a sloppy back-pass from Hussein conceded the winner in the second. We were choking at the worst possible moment.
Not only had we blown the title to Värnamo, but we were threatening to blow automatic promotion too. Going into the final day, we were only two points clear of Falkenberg, who had the better goal difference.
That meant we needed to beat mid-table AFC Eskilstuna at home to secure promotion to the Allsvenskan. If we failed, and Falkenberg won their final match against Degerfors, they would go up instead… and we would face a two-legged promotion/relegation play-off with Örebro instead.
After a nervy opening half-hour, our big chance came in the 33rd minute. Fonteneau picked out Fouad in space on the left wing, and the Egyptian magician did this.
1-0 up at half-time, but we couldn’t relax yet. Just as Falkenberg took the lead in their game early in the second half, Eskilstuna broke through and scored what they thought was a devastating equaliser. The offside flag came as a huge relief.
Then, on 62 minutes, Sergel won us a penalty. Fouad stepped forward, with a chance to double our lead to 2-0…
Ahmed, I could kiss you! Now we needed to hold on for 30 more minutes with no more dramas.
EUPHORIA! We’re going u-u-u-u-u-u-UP!
And just to make it even sweeter, Degerfors had equalised at Falkenberg in the 90th minute! We didn’t even need to win our final match after all!
In just 12 months, Nacka FC had been transformed from misfiring mid-tablers into Superettan runners-up… and now we were on our way to the Allsvenskan! How on Earth had we done that?
SEASON REVIEW
[Yes, Mounir’s stats are broken because he technically left us and then came back. We’ve been here before.]
What a season! Those tactical changes and reinforcements over the past year have certainly made a difference!
We scored a league-best 60 goals – 30 at home, 30 away. We hit the target 45% of the time, and converting 17% of our shots into goals. Aside from the two scoring machines, I also need to give plenty of credit to midfielder Hussein (who got a career-high eight assists) and right-winger Wall (who enjoyed an unexpected resurgence with 13 goal contributions).
Meanwhile, after suffering 10 home league defeats in the past two seasons, we have made Fisksätra a fortress once again. We had the best home record in the Superettan, with 12 wins out of a possible 15. Just try to forget about the 1-0 losses to Trelleborg and Öster.
Our greater ambition came at a heavy cost away from home, as opponents responded to our 30 goals by putting 29 in our net. Just like two years ago, we don’t give up very many scoring chances – but those that we do are often easy ones.
We clearly cannot afford to leave ourselves so wide open when we enter the Allsvenskan. Fonteneau and Gamarra are both very talented young defenders, but they need more experienced legs to help them out. We also need a goalkeeper who can actually do his job properly on a consistent basis.
But there’s no doubting that these two lads are ready for top-flight football. Fouad and Sergel each scored 18 Superettan goals – and Ahmed’s final-day brace meant he pipped his older team-mate to the Golden Boot on games played! The Egyptian teenager was also named as the Superettan’s Young Player of the Year… and finished 3rd in the Player of the Year vote!
Sergel didn’t leave empty-handed, though. Having netted three times in the Cupen, he was our top scorer overall on 21 goals – and he deservedly won the Nacka Fans’ Player of the Year award too.
And finally, Sergel and Wall have the honour of hosting our end-of-season celebrations. Yes, it’s time for a Noels House Party!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the latest chapter of “Nacka’s Yard”. Join me again next time, when we begin the next phase of our epic adventure – in the Allsvenskan!
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