Sandvikens IF 2026 Season Review
Originally Posted by
Dan
It's translated pretty well to the league this season, as we've been much better at both ends of the pitch & have managed to turn draws into wins, which has seen us climb the table & we're in with a shout of joining the promotion race if we can sustain it.
After seeing some improvements over the first half of the league season, I once again decided not to make any moves in the midseason window. I felt good about the squad, and didn't really see anywhere we needed to upgrade, but would my faith be rewarded?
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I'd say that's a yes. We played really well all season long, and as the season went on we moved from battling for the final automatic promotion spot to a full on title challenge, thanks largely to us
beating the Landskrona BOIS just days after a win over GAIS which helped cut the top three clear of the rest. The results above took us to the final day, where all three teams were still in with a shot of winning the title. We squeaked in front of Landskrona by a point on the penultimate game week, with Västerås -
who we smashed - only really still in the race on a technicality due to our 3pt lead on them & huge goal difference advantage. Could we get it done?
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Proper FM stuff, this one, although going by the stat you might say they were the ones who got FM'd, not us. Their dominance on the stat sheet wasn't reflected in the highlights though, so it was left to the ref to balance things out. Their penalty was one of those nonsense ones where the defender goes to make a tackle & it just hard cuts to the spot kick, the second yellow was probably even worse, and then we conceded a header from a corner with basically the last touch of the game. Anyway, that left the door open for Landskrona, who could steal it back from us with a win...
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When we conceded I thought we'd fucked it. I didn't catch the score in the other game, but I thought they were winning & when the final whistle blew there was no trophy lift & I got team talk options about blowing the title, so I was very surprised when I saw that
Landskrona had also been FM'd & we actually had won the league after all.
I think we were deserving winners in the end, and in a way it was quite similar to Pompey's season in real life. We were hard to beat, solid all over the pitch & consistently stepped up in the big games, and we've ended the season on a 20 game unbeaten run whilst the teams around us started to falter as the pressure ramped up.
The Squad:
Just want to recap some of the standout players this season, as it was a very different story to our unremarkable first season.
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We'll start in goal, where
Mathias Nilsson had a much better season, living up to his billing as one of the better GKs in the league & someone who should be able to play in the Allsvenskan. He made some big saves, including stopping 2 penalties, and even though the skin doesn't have a pizza chart for goalkeepers his per 90 numbers are all strong so it's good that we managed to get him to agree to a midseason contract extension after he'd had his head turned over the offseason.
We'd had some issues with our back three last year, but the unit took a big step forward this season with the addition of
Maxwell Woledzi, who proved to be an excellent allrounder, hitting key numbers in tackle success rate & header win rate whilst also providing great passing & progression numbers. The other two guys were already here last season, but some changes to how they were deployed helped us get more out of them.
Herman Magnusson was brought in as our highest earner last year & was very underwhelming as our right CB, but a move into the middle saw a much better season from him, with captain
Gustav Thörn swapping over & continuing to play well. Our wing backs were solid, with
Jean probably being the best of the bunch, but I just don't seem to be able to get monster seasons from my FB/WBs.
In midfield we once again got solid seasons from
Wilitty Younoussa,
Falko Michel &
Simon Marklund, although all three had some injury problems as the season wore on, but I'd been looking for more goal threat from our AMs & we got a huge hit there in the shape of
Filip Olsson, who hit double digit goals & has an argument to be our player of the season. It doesn't stop there though, as I was pleasantly surprised by the contributions we got from
Kevin Holmén &
Markus Björkqvist, a couple of guys who I'd signed as squad depth but who stepped in ably in multiple spots when injuries hit.
Up front
Raymond N'Dour had another prolific season, but he was surpassed by the guy I almost signed instead of him last season,
Hemeya Tanjy from the mighty Mauritania, who came out of the blocks hot with four goals in his first start & never really looked back.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do now, to be honest. My contract runs out in a few weeks & there are plenty of jobs going since the Swedish season ends in November, however I'm not sure I'll have the rep to be able to get a job that's a significant upgrade, and there aren't any intriguing vacancies out there at the moment anyway, so I might be better of staying for one more year & seeing what that does for my rep. I guess we'll have to wait & see how things play out...