Allsvenskan is on a break waiting for the World Cup, and so am I – so why not write a quick recap of the action so far? Well I hadn’t planned on it, but with this first part of the season being far more interesting than what we’ve seen in a long time, I simply couldn’t resist.
The number of matches played are a bit unevenly distributed so far, with Malmö, AIK and Djurgården all having played one extra match each to give room for the European qualifiers later this summer, while Sirius‘ season opener against Sundsvall was postponed due to poor pitch conditions.
The main (and I mean MAIN) narratives so far have been Malmö’s fall from grace and Hammarby‘s surprisingly flying start to the season. A mini narrative this season is also Östersund with their poor start, criminal investigations into chairman Kindberg‘s business and manager of the year for the last two seasons, Graham Potter, leaving to take over Swansea in the Championship.
Title defenders Malmö very disappointingly sit in 10th and are nowhere near their usual standard which has seen them claim the top spot 4 times in the last 5 seasons. Magnus Pehrsson was under a lot of pressure early on and after failing to bounce back after the 3-0 defeat to Djurgården in the Swedish Cup final, he was soon fired.
Hammarby on the other hand got off to a great start, winning 8 and drawing once before finishing with their first defeat of the season (against rivals AIK) and another draw. For a team that finished 9th last season, looked quite poor, sacked their manager and promoted his assistant in a move that looked like a huge gamble, this is surprising even for Allsvenskan. Fair play to Hammarby and Stefan Billborn though, they have undeniably been the best team so far, playing a very entertaining attacking football.
That said, let’s get on with some scatterplots:
Looking at chances we can see that Hammarby spend a lot of time attacking, while at the same time limiting their opponents. Häcken does a good job as well, and Malmö actually don’t look too bad quantity-wise. AIK is a curious case with Rikard Norling as usual having his side focus more on game control than chance dominance, limiting their attack even more than last season. A bottom quartet of Dalkurd, Trelleborg, Sirius and Brommapojkarna can be easily distinguished here, with especially promoted BP looking really poor when it comes to raw chance numbers, facing a whopping 17 chances per match.
Hammarby have been effective in front of goal, which when combined with their many chances of course is a big part of their impressive run so far. Malmö and Häcken on the other hand have seen their good numbers spoiled by some ineffective finishing, while AIK’s effectiveness has compensated for their low quantity and allows them to aim for the top. Brommapojkarna’s performance is dismal here as well, and we can also note that IFK Göteborg worryingly combine low chance quantity with ineffective scoring.
Looking at defensive effectiveness we see how Hammarby are actually quite poor, proving the point that their success is mostly down to their impressive attack. Malmö and Östersund look surprisingly bad as well, on par with bottom teams Sirius and Dalkurd. Had they defended better they would have gone into the summer break with far more confidence of a top 3 finish, and I don’t even want to think about how Hammarby would look if they get their defense in shape.
AIK is of course the master defenders, handling the few chances faced very effectively, as is Norling’s trademark. As we’ve seen though, they’ve done so by giving up some attacking ambition, relying more on effectiveness in front of goal. There could be a fine line between success and utter failure with this approach but I suspect AIK to be in the race for the title up until November.
Bottom placed Sirius look really poor defensively and as usual they are plagued by injuries as well. They’ve also had to start with their goalkeeping coach a few matches as their only fit goalkeeper was suspended after a cocaine-related offense, which certainly didn’t make things easier. Brommapojkarna’s defensive effectiveness look OK but they still face way too many chances to avoid being involved in the relegation battle.
Lastly, Örebro have dramatically improved their defense under new manager Axel Kjäll, going from around 7.5 chances faced per goal conceded last season, to almost 12 so far. They still face a lot of chances but defend these well, looking very much to have a deliberate strategy to defend the box and let the opposition bomb away from poorer chance locations.
Looking at the Expected goals scatter we see just how different Hammarby and AIK’s approaches are. Interestingly, this fits very well with the traditional values of the clubs with AIK focusing a lot on a solid defense looking for a controlled 1-0 win while Hammarby attack head on carefree, not minding conceding a goal or two as they can always score more if needed.
Besides the top 2 teams, there seems to be some clustering going on xG-wise. A group of 5 clubs including Malmö and Djurgården look to be in contention for a top 3 spot with average or better defenses and strong attacking, while a roughly average quartet are lead by Örebro. Lastly, we see how the bottom quartet is actually a quintet with Sundsvall also showing poor underlying performances in both ends of the pitch.
The clustering shows up when looking at Expected Goals Difference as well, also showing that Häcken is actually on par with AIK and that Östersund is slightly worse than the other top 3 contenders. Sirius are just bad.
How about a prediction then – will the main narratives continue or will Malmö regain their form and will Hammarby drop back to their former mediocrity? Who will be relegated? Well, even if I wanted to make a prediction, we’ve seen just a bit more than one third of the season so far and there’s still a lot to come, including a very interesting transfer window which could see most clubs look very different come mid August. The only thing I can say is that the remainder of the season could very well get even more interesting than what we’ve seen so far.
That’s it for now, but I will hopefully be back soon with an update on individual player performances.
This article was written with the aid of StrataData, which is property of Stratagem Technologies. StrataData powers the StrataBet Sports Trading Platform, in addition to StrataBet Premium Recommendations.
Though sharing honors as the league top scorer at 14 with Magnus Eriksson, the moral winner is Norrköping’s Kalle Holmberg with 13 open play goals while 5 of Eriksson’s goals came from penalties. Eriksson’s 9 open play goals is still very impressive though, seeing him finish joint second together with a group of strong goalscorers, all forwards – while Eriksson has mainly been used in midfield in Özcan Melkemichel’s Djurgården.
Comparing goals and xG we see that Stefanelli’s output isn’t that much better than expected, he could very well be the real deal. Another interesting point is that Malmö’s captain Markus Rosenberg continues to underperform against xG.
Looking at how many chances players create and the average quality of those chances should give us at least some sense of their preferred attacking styles. We see here how most strong attacking players tend to cluster around an area of compromise between quality and quantity. In this group, Viktor Prodell, Johan Bertilsson, Henok Goitom and Mohamed Buya Turay tend to rely more on high quality chances (all above 0.20 xG per chance), while David Moberg-Karlsson and Stefanelli prefer to just rack up chance after chance, the latter with some respectable xG per chance as well.
Elfsborg’s Simon Lundevall provided most assist overall but taking playing time into account, IFK Norrköping’s Niclas Eliasson was Allsvenskan’s main creator this season. Racking up 11 assists in the first half of the season before leaving for Bristol City in the Championship, his departure effectively ended Norrköping’s top 3 ambitions.
Comparing assists and xA we see how Niclas Eliasson has been outperforming his expected output (likely thanks to some effective scoring from Kalle Homberg) while Ken Sema has been underperforming. Lundevall is closer to his expected output.
Just like with the Attacking Styles, Player Chance Creation Styles are mostly clustered with a lot of creative players combining reasonable quality with quantity. Ken Sema, Elias Andersson and Yoshimar Yotún (who left Malmö for the MLS in the summer) are the extremes when it comes to creation volume, while Andreas Vindheim has created some very good chances for Malmö.
By combining goals and assists into Attacking Production we see that Besara was the most productive player when it comes to raw numbers, but when factoring in playing time, Stefanelli once again tops the table in both expected and actual output. Prodell has done well considering his playing time, as well as Malmö’s Alexander Jeremejeff who’s second behind Stefanelli in xG+A per 90 minutes.
Looking at actual and expected output, we see how most strong attacking players like Besara, Jebali, Homberg, Eriksson, Hysén and Stefanelli tend to perform close to what we can expected. Eliasson is again overperforming while Rosenberg is doing the opposite. Eric Larsson is worth a special mention here as he has produced some fine numbers for a fullback, with his underperformance coming largely from his teammates in Sundsvall underperforming on the chances he created for them.
Seperating Expected Goals and Expected Assists let us see how the attacking players specialise. Once again we see how this season has really lacked many strong specialist, with only Stefanelli and Sema really standing out on their ends. Most players tend to cluster somewhat here as well, combining creativity with being at the end of chances as well.
As mentioned earlier, Kalle Holmberg was this season’s strongest goalscorer, and from his Chance Map it’s easy to see why: he usually gets into some very good positions just in front of goal, with an average xG of 0.19 per chance. 13 open play goals is strong, but as I’ve also mentioned I think he could’ve done even better had IFK Norrköping’s performance not dropped (and Niclas Eliasson not left).
Operating from Djurgården’s right wing, Magnus Eriksson was another strong goalscorer this season, though a bit more versatile as he also provided a lot of assists for his team. Mostly crosses from the right flank but also two shot rebounds. His Chance Map is a bit different from Holmberg’s with more chances outside the box, which is only natural as he’s after all a midfielder. Though attacking is certainly his main quality, Djurgården will also miss his work ethic, grit and competitiveness now that he’s left for the MLS.
Veteran Tobias Hysén continues to be extremely important to IFK Göteborg’s attack. His Chance Map combines a lot of good chances inside the box with some poorer outside, some of them direct free kick. When it comes to Chance Creation he’s provided some crucial passing inside and into the box, as well as some corners and free kicks.
Örebro’s Nahir Besara was also extremely important to his team’s attack, combining some chances inside the box with a lot of shooting from outside, including one goal from a direct free kick. His creation numbers are boosted by three rebounds who turned into goals, otherwise it’s mostly corners and crosses into the box.
Nicolás Stefanelli arrived at AIK at a crucial time this summer, with the team’s attack struggling during the first half of the season. The Argentinian took some time to adopt but slowly turned into to a real strong presence up front, scoring 9 goals from 14 starts. It will be very interesting indeed to see if he can continue his fine performance come the new season. As a Djurgården supporter, I sure hope not.
Linus Hallenius is an interesting case that’s flown under at least my radar this season. With 7 goals and nearly 10 xG he’s done well for a struggling Sundsvall side that just barely managed to stay up. Most of his chances have been created by Eric Larsson, so it’ll be very interesting to see if Hallenius can continue his fine performance next season with the right back having left for champions Malmö.
Elfsborg’s Simon Lundevall was the assist king this season at 12, with 4 of them coming from corners, curiously with some rather high xA values – 3 of them are above 0.30 xA. Maybe Elfsborg have some corner strong routine going on? Lundevall has also provided some long range passes on the left half of the pitch, which I guess is related to counter-attacking.
Niclas Eliasson’s strong first half of a season earned him a move abroad, and as mentioned earlier IFK Norrköping never really looked the same after that. Overperfoming, sure, but he did create some really good chances for his team with his precise crossing from both flanks.
Ken Sema was another creation monster, racking up some really good chances with an average xA per chance of 0.18. It’s clear to see why, as most of his passes was either directly inside the box, or ending up in it – a direct consequence of Östersund’s heavily passing-oriented style of attack.
Though it stopped at just one season before he chose to end his career, Kim Källström’s long-awaited return to Djurgården was (despite some very inconsistent perfomances) instrumental in returning the team he once won the league with in two consecutive seasons at the start of the millenium, back to the top 3. When he was at his best this season, sitting back in his deep-lying playmaker role he dictated much of Djurgården’s attack with his quarter-back ‘Hail Mary’ style of long passing. Interestingly though, all his assists came from set pieces where he got more time to use his precise left foot.
I mentioned Eric Larsson before and looking at his Chance Creation Map we see clearly how strong a player he is. From his right back position at struggling Sundsvall he produced 52 chances and well over 6 xA – more than most midfielders. Though his teammates only managed to score twice on these chances, with his move to Malmö I expect him to get a lot more assists next season.
Take The Shot 