Allsvenskan Round One Summary

April 4th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments Off

The first round of the Allsvenskan is behind us and I thought I would go ahead with a quick summary of the action that took place. As with any league in the world, there isn’t all that much to be surmised and taken apart for analysis after only one game, however that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still questions waiting to be asked.

Reigning champions Malmö FF took on Trelleborg in a strange game; strange in the sense that it was played in Malmö´s stadium while being a home game for Trelleborg. Trelleborg had been told about a week before that their stadium’s pitch did not warrant a game at this time of year. While I could write a post about the awful pitch conditions in the northern leagues of Europe, I will save that for another time and instead focus on the result: Malmö crushed Trelleborg 4-2. Daniel Larsson scored twice, with Figuereido and Mehmeti getting one apiece in what could have been a preview of things to come for Malmö this season. The reason for this is probably because they managed to keep their squad intact. Now the main threat is going to be when do they lose trainer Roland Nilsson who has one foot out the door and in FC Copenhagen. If Ivo Pekalski gets fit in and stays that way then I have to believe that Malmö might go pretty far in those fall Champions League qualifiers.

Halmstads BK and Kalmar FF had a boring 0-0 draw in what was very possibly also a sign of things to come: two underperforming teams for this season. Joe Sise, the Halmstad striker, still seems to be missing something up front and leads me to wonder what it was that lead him to be included in the U21 squads last year when things mattered.

Two of the predicted bottom teams played one another: Syrianska and Gefle battled it out to a 1-1 tie. Helsingborg hissed and stuttered to a 1-0 win over last season’s wild card Mjällby (when El-Kabir is back in form then I don’t think it will be as easy as that was). In another meeting at what is likely to be the bottom, Norrköping beat Gais 2-0.

In the Monday evening games, Elfsborg came from behind to beat Häcken. New signing Lasse Nilsson scored a late goal on a header to save the season opener from being a complete nightmare as it seems at this moment of writing that Jön Jönsson has played his first and last game of the season after tonight’s knee injury. IFK Göteborg lost 1-0 to Örebro and even with Karl Svensson’s notorious bad luck that manifested itself this evening in two yellow cards, I expect more from IFK. At the same time I have to admit that Örebro is going to be a tough nut to crack this year. Then finally, in the first real Derby of the year, AIK and Djurgården played a yawn of a draw (because lets face it any draw is boring).