raz4la Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 NORTHERN FOOTBALL - IFK LULEÅ The footballing landscape in Sweden is pretty straight forward. Up north there are barely any teams in the top divison while down south there are a lot of them. But if you have followed European football a little bit, Östersund has made some waves. This is a team with who is from the northern parts of Sweden with a coach who might be the best manager in the country (and his English!). The discussion is pretty interesting, why are there so few teams from the north in the higher divisions in Sweden? If we go through the top two divisions, there is only three teams from the northern parts. Östersund who has done fantastic, GIF Sundsvall who barely stayed in the top division and Gefle who is in the bottom of Superettan. Östersund is north for the people in Malmö, Göteborg and Stockholm. IFK Luleå is north for the people in Östersund. The city is close to the border with Finland. IFK Luleå is one of the oldest clubs in Sweden but they have only been in the top division for one season back in early 70s. There is pretty much only two people who is "famous" for the general public who has come from Luleå and gone in to football. Hans Backe, who was the assistant manager to Sven-Göran Eriksson, is born in Luleå. Jonas Eriksson, who probably is one of the top 20 or something like that refs in the world, is a fan of the club and even played in the academy. But why IFK Luleå? There is something very interesting to try to build something with a team who is in the northern parts of Sweden. The few times people picks a team here in Sweden they mostly land on some of the clubs down south. There is barely no money in the club and they have pretty much zero scouting knowledge. So most of the players who wants to join the club are from the area in the north. But the club is very interesting! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 THE TEAM Here is the current setup of players we have in the team. The numbers are a bit skewed because a lot of our players can play in many different positions. But our main formation will be a 4-2-3-1, even when we lack any AMCs. Here is the team report; Our best position is for sure our CBs. We have four guys who can do a decent job at this level. Vladimir Sudar is a good goalkeeper and he has a decent talent behind him. We have only one out and out striker and pretty much zero RBs in the team. So with the small amount we have left in our wage budget we really need to find a striker we can have on the bench, ATLEAST one RB and AMC. Another question mark around our team is the determination. - 8 is decent for this level, but I can't let them go under 7. So we have 6 players who are under and three of those are players in our starting eleven. That's not ideal. Players like Anton Andersson, Sebastian Andersson, Martin Oskarsson, Barzan Jamshidi, Justice Tetteh Komey and Gustav Rönnbäck-Wallin really doesn't have a place in this team. But we really don't have the luxury of changing those players. So here is what we need in the transfer market.- 1 starting AMC. - 1 starting RB. - Backup striker. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 @Jimbokav1971 really likes to talk about the personality of the players. Well, our guys is "Balanced" for the most part. Not ideal, I would like to have atleast some professionals in the team. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 We have two talents in the team who are very unpolished, but they might have a place in our team. The first one is Jonathan Vikström. The guy has some obvious qualities, good passer, fast and a hard worker. But if you go deeper in those attributes he has some major flaws. 7 tackling and 4 marking is not good enough to play in a midfield two. So the guy most play higher up the field. But then he only has 2 flair, 3 concentration ,4 anticipation and off the ball. Add 2 balance to that and we have a guy who might be the best passer of the ball in the team, but when he has possession he doesn't know what to do with it. Sure, he's only 16 so those attributes might go forward, but at the moment he has to many flaws to be a first team player. Really don't know what we should do we this guy. Might retrain him to play AMC and try to sort out some of his flaws in his game. Karl Olausson is the other guy. He can play both as a central midfielder and out on the left wing. He also has some knowledge as a AMC. He is as unpolished as Jonathan Vikström but this guy might have a better upside. Markin and tackling is not good enough to plas as a CM in my teams. So he would probably be a AMC. Good technique with decent first touch and dribbling. Dribbling and composure is his main flaws. But this guy has some interesting attributes that might fit in well with our team. Here is a comparison of the two players. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
deltablue Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 I like a nice bit of Swedish action Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 2 hours ago, deltablue said: I like a nice bit of Swedish action Yeah, it's a fun league! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrikholm Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 6 hours ago, raz4la said: NORTHERN FOOTBALL - IFK LULEÅ The discussion is pretty interesting, why are there so few teams from the north in the higher divisions in Sweden? Well I'm Swedish and it's quite easy: because nature. The climate in the North makes it really hard and expensive to get a good natural grass pitch. Almost impossible for smaller clubs. Bandy and Ice Hockey are also big sports in Sweden. Not as popular as football but a lot of kids in my region (Close to Stockholm) play football in the summer and/or bandy/ice hockey in the winter. In the northern part it's been much easier to play ice hockey spontaneuously with your friends than football. And in the South the opposite. In recent year syntethic grass has helped Swedish teams a lot so they can play all year but it's still quite new and isn't available for everyone. Also there is a big discussion in Swedish football about this syntethic surface, but I'm not gonna take that now. But all in all it's because our climate. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 12, 2018 Author Share Posted January 12, 2018 Before the transfer window we had a plan to bring in atleast one starting AMC, one starting RB and a backup striker. Lincoln academy player Karl Cunningham joined us on a free transfer. The guy might be the best player at the club and will of course slot in as the starting AMC in our tactic. Billy Berntsson is a guy with a lot of experience since he came through the Malmö FF academy. Solid player. Prosper Kasim joins us on loan from IFK Göteborg. He can play both on the wing and up top. It's good to have players who are flexible because we pretty much has zero depth in this team. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 12, 2018 Author Share Posted January 12, 2018 0-0-4 in the opening of the season. We haven't delivered in front of goal and it has cost us in most of the games. The 4-2-3-1 might not be the way to go with this team. Going back to the basics, 4-2-2. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 12, 2018 Author Share Posted January 12, 2018 Luleå born academy product Karl Olausson brings home the first three points of the season with his two goals. He came on after we subbed off our striker Justice Tetteh Komey after he came one on one with the goalkeeper three times and didn't score. Went to a strikerless 4-4-2 and Olausson delivered! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 14, 2018 Author Share Posted January 14, 2018 We started the league with 4 straight losses while we tried to put together a tactic for this team. It started with a 4-2-3-1 but we couldn't get it going. Mainly because of our strikers who were not delivering. We then went with a 4-4-1-1 and it turned around, for a while. But now we barely created anything. So after a 1-5 dismantling from Brage we went back to the 4-2-3-1 but with some changes. More pressing and a higher defensive line sorted out a lot for us. Three straight games without a loss and we climbed out of the relegation zone. We have been so inconsistent. The board wants us to avoid relegation and we are just sitting above the relegation zone. BK Forward and Team TG has pretty much already gotten relegated. The transfer window has now opened and we really need a new striker. Our two main strikers, Gustav Rönnbäck-Wallin (1 goal) and Justice Tetteh Komey (1 goal) has not been good enough. It's our two wingers who have scored the most goals (4) in the team. If we just could find a decent striker on loan we should avoid relegation. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 14, 2018 Author Share Posted January 14, 2018 We're going to get relegated if our strikers can't sort themselfs out. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 14, 2018 Author Share Posted January 14, 2018 Another loan from IFK Göteborg. They had no strikers that were good enough so we picked up this guy instead. He's probably the best player at the club and will of course slot into the starting eleven. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 7 straight games without a win. Next game up is against BK Forward who are last in the table with 5 points. If we do not pick up three points there we might be in a bit of a mess in the league. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 5 games left of the season, Team TG who is behind us at 13th has won back to back games and are now on the same points as us. Enskede who is sitting above us with 2 points have three straight losses i in the league. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 Ahead of a big game against IK Sleipner and we have four starters suspended, all of them is for our defence. Ouch. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz4la Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 Who would've thought that? Got any of those tickets to Yemen that you had at Malmö, @ManUtd1? Ah well, on to the next one! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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