IFK Gothenburg's Future in Doubt After Humiliating Loss Against Sirius

Published: Less than 20 min ago

Updated: Less than 10 min ago

Jens Askou had a difficult start to his stay at IFK Gothenburg. Photo: TOBIAS STERNER / BILDBYRÅN

UP SALE. Danish wrestling football?

It doesn’t help, whatever IFK Gothenburg comes up with in 2023, nothing lifts.

Jens Askou got off to a nightmare start, but it’s not his fault. It doesn’t matter who is the coach in this version of Blåvitt.

There was a new coach on the sidelines in IFK Göteborg but it was the same old 4-4-2. It was not that Jens Askou brought any revolutionary ideas with IFK Göteborg to the Studenternas.

When a Danish centre-back (Askou) with player experience from Norwich and Millwall was pitted against a former All-Swedish top scorer, Christer Mattiasson, it was Sirius who wanted to be the most constructive on his home ground.

The situation was exposed to the twelfth in the table from Uppsala, but it fades when you have both AIK and IFK Göteborg behind you. Then the idea of the game will be accordingly, at least here and now for IFK Göteborg.

Jens Askou is of course an evacuation coach at the moment and the recipe is simple: minimize the errors, make sure that the ball is more often around the opponents’ penalty area than their own. Claim wins, points.

Easy to understand, harder for IFK Gothenburg 2023 to execute.

It is easy for that idea of the game to passivize when you want to avoid mistakes, so that in modern Swedish football it is not so forward-leaning.

Sirius created the best chances

Sirius’ 1-0 goal deeply hurt IFK Gothenburg’s souls in several dimensions.

Edi Sylisufaj, parent club Falkenbergs FF, tricked Johan Bångsbo with him, and in the gap Tashreeq Matthews, great breakthrough in Varbergs Bois, headed in 1-0 in front of Oscar Wendt.

The Sirius duo are players who used to automatically end up a few miles north – but that was in bygone times when IFK Göteborg was a top Allsvenskan team.

The defensive game must also have hurt the former centre-back Askou.

Sirius continued to create the best chances with sharper Sylisufaj, Matthews, Daniel Stensson and Aron Bjarnason who can easily be categorized as better footballers but the longer the first half suffered – really suffered from a football aesthetic perspective – IFK Gothenburg’s wrestling football version 3.0, the Danish the variant, into the match.

For a while, the most common passing route was a long ball from Pontus Dahlberg and a header from Marcus Berg towards Eman Markovic, who ran and ran and got some nice scoring opportunities without getting the last bit. It was a kind of upper hand for the guests from the west coast, but without any scoring chances, where Marcus Berg is far from the great days and Gustaf Norlin has gone astray.

IFK Göteborg tried the same way in the second half, but wrestling football takes over. In the hunt for the ball and equaliser, Anders Trondsen and Elias Hagen completely lost themselves in the press game. Sirius’s more skilled players found out easily and Matthews was given huge areas to find, replaced Joakim Persson with a deep free kick and 2-0 was rolled in coolly behind Pontus Dahlberg.

An extremely good transfer window is required

The blue-and-white frustration and humiliation got another face when Trondsen stamped Jamie Roche over the foot/leg and got red straight away.

It was closer to 3-0 than any 1-2 reduction in any situation and this is how big the difference is between the middle team Sirius and the bottom team IFK Göteborg who are playing for their Allsvenskan existence and from what I perceived did not create a single goal chance over 90 minutes.

It will take a really good – no, an extremely good – transfer window by new technical director Ola Larsson together with green and unproven coach Jens Askou to save IFK Gothenburg in 2023. A couple, three qualified new acquisitions, and finding the right way with new players has not been good and then I am diplomatic, is a must.

Otherwise it won’t help whoever the coach is.

Jens Askou may be a good coach, but the hiring of him risks coming across as wildly ill-timed as the team’s play. When IFK Göteborg’s players need to be pumped with self-confidence and belief, they should do so by a coach who has won one of their last 17 league matches. Get that equation together.

As it is right now, the best IFK Göteborg can hope for is to have two lifelines behind them this autumn and squeeze a qualifying spot – where another Gothenburg team can stand on the other side in the form of Gais or perhaps Utsikten.

I doubt that this IFK Göteborg will manage it in the same way as in 2002 when they saved themselves via qualifying against Västra Frölunda.