For several months early in the season Hammarby were the pace-setters and they looked like genuine contenders for the title, but past the summer break things started slipping away from them and the culmination of the disappointment came on the last day of the campaign when a damaging 3:3 away draw vs. Ostersunds saw Hammarby missing out on a top 3 finish and place in Europe on goal difference.
In April and May Green and Whites looked unstoppable – 8 wins plus a draw in the first 9 rounds, with Hammarby scoring 2 goals or more in every one of these first 9 games, made everyone talk about them as the team to beat in 2018.
Unfortunately there was issue with the defensive stability, Hammarby kept just 1 clean sheet in the opening 12 rounds, and once the frequency with which the strikers were scoring was no longer there the problems came.
On each side of the summer break Hammarby had difficult fixtures that saw them collecting just 2 points from 4 matches and come mid-July they lost the first place never to return to it again.
Selling the team’s top goalscorer in the first part of the season Dibba in June also didn’t help and without his contributions Hammarby started suffering. The main downfall proved to be the home form, with 4 of Hammarby’s 6 league defeats coming in front of their fans.
Hamad was also crucial for the results and the dramatic drop of his form past the halfway point of the season reflected on Hammarby’s overall displays. The winger scored 7 of his 10 goals in the first half of the campaign, he never scored from open play past round 14.
Hammarby were still able to accumulate wins with regularity though, with Paulsen having an inspiring campaign that made him the most effective defender in the entire league with his 5 goals and 6 assists.
This kept Hammarby in the top 3 all campaign apart from a single week in the summer and when Green and Whites edged their fierce rivals for Europe Hacken 1:0 in the penultimate round they thought they’d secured a medal.
Unfortunately they had only two-point lead over Malmo, with the goal difference also against Hammarby, and slow start to their last match vs. Ostersunds and extremely dramatic 3:3 draw saw Green and Whites left heart-broken once the curtain of the 2018 campaign fell.
