Beyond the Scoreboard: Henning Berg and AIK’s unconvincing underlying conundrum revealed – scout report

We’re now five games into the 2024 Allsvenskan season for most sides, and reigning champions Malmö, under the guidance of highly regarded manager Henrik Rydström, who helped the club to their 23rd Swedish top-flight title last season, have begun their attempted title defence in style, winning each of their first five league games this term.

Their closest rivals in the league, at the time of writing, are AIK — another side with a prestigious history in Swedish football, with 12 league titles to their name.

AIK are competing under the tutelage of three-time Premier League winner and 1998/99 UEFA Champions League winner — the latter of which was achieved with Manchester United, the former being achieved both with the Red Devils and Blackburn Rovers, Henning Berg.

Berg had a playing career that would be the envy even of some highly successful greats of the game in terms of silverware. While he hasn’t exactly reached the same heights as a manager just yet, he has achieved a fair amount of success, which is not to be played down, including a Polish Ekstraklasa title with Legia Warszawa and, more recently, a Cypriot top-flight title with Omonia Nicosia.

Now managing in Sweden for the first time in his career, Berg has got off to a fairly positive start in terms of results, successfully taking his side to the semi-finals of the Svenska Cupen, only losing out on penalties to Djurgårdens, who will face Malmö in the final on the first of May, while his side remains one of only two yet to lose a game in Sweden’s top-flight this term.

That said, this tactical analysis piece is not going to be a positive appraisal of Berg’s achievements with the team thus far or an explanation of why they’re the closest to Malmö at this point in the campaign. Rather, it will be a critical analysis highlighting some concerning underlying numbers that spell disaster for Berg’s side unless things change quickly.

We’ll begin with some data analysis highlighting a critical area within AIK’s game that’s currently lacking before progressing into some tactical analysis of where exactly things are going wrong on the pitch to lead to the worrying numbers we’ve identified and what must be done to improve Gnaget’s performances and tactics.

Let’s get into it.

AIK’s chance creation conundrum through numbers

As the title of this section suggests, AIK is struggling in the chance creation department right now. This isn’t obvious if you look purely at goals, with Berg’s side having netted eight in five games—the fifth-highest total in Allsvenskan at this point in the campaign.

However, their xG sits at 5.78, the sixth-lowest in the league, while their xG per shot is currently the fourth-worst in Sweden’s top flight at 0.096.

In addition to this, though AIK have the second-best defensive record in the league, conceding just three in five games, they’ve conceded a whopping 9.09 xG — the fourth-highest in Allsvenskan — a clear indicator of unsustainable overperformance from Berg’s side at this point in the campaign.

While their total of 11 points puts them second on the table right now, their expected points of 4.9 put them sixth from bottom, which is probably a more realistic position based on the quality of their performances, especially going forward.

Indeed, it would appear from the above numbers that their defence is where things are really failing, but the reasons behind the high amount of chances conceded, and low amount of chances created converge somewhat in the team’s failure to generate enough chances and make use of the ball when they have possession.

Far too often, they’re ultimately failing to test the opposition’s goal and conceding possession far too easily, thus also allowing their opponents to attack them more frequently. Their failure to make sufficient use of the ball when they have it is directly helping the opposition to enjoy more opportunities to create chances against them, some of which have led to very high-xG opportunities that AIK have, at times, been quite fortunate not to concede from.

Firstly, AIK fall fourth-last for positional attacks created per 90, bettering only bottom-of-the-table Kalmar, along with Norrköping and Halmstad in that particular statistic, defined by Wyscout as: “Any open play attack (A possession that doesnt start from a set piece. The possession should have at least one successful action in the opposition final third to qualify as an attack) that is not a counterattack.”

Meanwhile, AIK sit joint-third bottom of the counterattack table, level with Kalmar this time, bettering only third-from-bottom of the league Värnamo — who are yet to generate a single counterattacking chance so far this term — and second-from-bottom of the league Västerås.

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