Djurgarden had a strange season that saw them stumping in the league, but this was all a result of their very impressive form between February and early May when they went on to win the Swedish Cup, defeated Malmo in the final, without even conceding a goal up until the match for the trophy.
This strong run in the cup affected the early results in the league with Djurgarden achieving only 2 wins in the opening 7 rounds. The motivation of the squad also dropped once the Swedish Cup was won as this meant that no matter what their league position was Djurgarden had a guaranteed place in Europe.
With that in mind and sitting in solid mid-table position, but way off the top 3, come the summer break Djurgarden’s coach Melkemichel started rebuilding with 2019 in mind. In June the league’s top goalscorer after 11 rounds Kadewere (7 goals) was sold for big fee in China, with two other strikers that flopped also released. Instead Djurgarden added 3 new faces, one for each area of the pitch.
Decent July, 2 wins and 2 draws, hinted that Blue and Blacks might still get in the mix for a top 3 finish, but very quickly back-to-back heavy defeats against Hacken and Kalmar in early August pretty much doomed the team to a place between 6th and 10th in the standings.
This influenced the last few months of the campaign in which the gaffer was clearly experimenting with his formation and regularly testing his options for different positions. Still despite all this a single defeat in the last nine rounds meant that Djurgarden secured a respectful league position in the top half of the table.
Without a doubt the defensive part was the much stronger aspect of Djurgarden’s displays, especially after the selling of Kadewere Blue and Blacks struggled for goals, with several defenders playing really well throughout the campaign. Probably the most impressive of the lot was Une Larsson simply because of his versatility. He played as centre-back, right-back and left-back in different games and in all his roles he was solid and providing the goods, which at age of just 23 was even more impressive.
