Halmstads suffered deserved relegation after going sixteen rounds without a win once they secured an unexpected 1:0 home success in the season-opener. Very quickly after this victory the obvious weaknesses of the very young squad were exposed and coach Jan Jonsson remained in charge only until the summer break when he was replaced by the 29-year-old Igor Krulj.
Despite the embarrassing winless run between rounds 2 and 17 Halmstads drew enough games to remain just above the bottom two. However, as other teams were improving, the young squad of the inexperienced new manager struggled to click into gear and a run of five consecutive defeats in August and early September saw Halmstads dropping into last place.
Only then the players started offering a bit more and Krulj’s men actually ended the season with three wins in the last six rounds, they have achieved just 2 victories in the opening 24 games, but unfortunately all this was enough for simply avoiding the last place and, despite the late revival, the relegation was confirmed with two games left to play.
It must be said that a major factor for the relegation was also the bad luck as the only two players older than 25 in the squad – captain and main centre-back Liverstram and the main striker Oremo – got injured in early August and they didn’t take part in many games in the last 10 rounds.
The mid-season departure of Haksabanovic gave the 18-year-old Gudmundsson plenty of chances to impress and he was definitely Halmstads’ best player from August onwards. He even finished as the team’s top goalscorer with his 4 goals and one thing that Krulj can be feeling positive about is that most of his players are very young and he has time to work with them.
