Eight games. No wins. And now, against the reigning Swedish champions at their own ground, not even a goal to show for it. IFK Göteborg drew 0-0 with Mjällby AIF on Monday evening at Gamla Ullevi and the mood around the club right now is about as dark as it gets for a team of this size and history. Bottom of the Allsvenskan table. Six points from nine games. Fifteenth place. You could see this coming from March and it has arrived right on schedule.
The strange thing is, Göteborg actually had the better of the shots. Eighteen attempts to Mjällby’s thirteen. Six on target to five. More possession? No — Mjällby had 55% of that. But the actual shooting stats, on paper, favoured the home side. It did not matter. They could not score. Two consecutive games without a goal now, and the cutting edge that a struggling team desperately needs was simply not there on Monday. The ball kept going wide. Or straight at Mjällby goalkeeper Strömberg. Or over the bar. It is that kind of season.
Mjällby came to Gothenburg as the defending champions. They won the 2025 Allsvenskan in extraordinary fashion — a small club from a fishing village of 800 people, the kind of story that gets written about for years afterward. This season they are sitting fifth, which is fine, comfortable, no panic, the title defence not quite matching the title run but the squad still functioning well enough. Coming to Gamla Ullevi and being content not to lose was exactly the mindset you would expect. And they achieved it without having to do anything spectacular.
The opening half was tight and scrappy. Six yellow cards across the full ninety minutes — four for Göteborg, three for Mjällby — tells you something about the tempo. Both teams going into challenges hard, both sets of players frustrated at different points, the referee busy. Göteborg pushed forward with the urgency that a side in their position has to push. Mjällby absorbed it with the calmness that reigning champions tend to carry, even when their form dips.
The best Göteborg chance of the first half came from a wide position — a cross that found someone in the box and resulted in a header that went straight at the goalkeeper. Nothing Strömberg had to dive for. That was the closest they came before halftime. For a home side desperate for three points against anyone right now, it was not nearly enough.
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Mjällby had their own moments. A counter in the 34th minute that Bergström ran onto — the striker who leads their attack this season — forced Göteborg’s goalkeeper into the best save of the first half. A low shot, hard and placed, pushed around the post. That was the clearest indication of what Mjällby could produce when they got forward quickly and found Bergström in space.
Second half followed the same pattern. Göteborg with more of the ball in attacking positions, Mjällby organised and hard to break down, the home side unable to find the combination or the individual moment that opens a compact defence. Substitutions came. Different players, same problem. The shots kept being attempted — eighteen by full time, which is not nothing — but quality inside the area was the issue, not quantity of attempts outside it.
Mjällby’s away record this season has been patchy. They have not scored in two of their four away Allsvenskan games. Monday made it three. But they did not need to score. A point away from home, against a team in crisis, playing the reigning champions — most Mjällby fans will take that and move on.
For Göteborg it is another story entirely. No win in eight league games. That run now includes losses and draws, but what unites all of them is the inability to produce winning football consistently. The goals are not coming — two consecutive blanks now — and when you are fifteenth in the Allsvenskan table with that kind of record, the words “relegation battle” start appearing in conversations whether you want them to or not.
The squad is there. IFK Göteborg are one of the biggest clubs in Swedish football. Twenty-three league titles. Conference League football last season. This is not a club without resources or history. But something is clearly wrong right now — in the system, in the confidence, in the combination between the attacking players — and Monday’s 0-0 did not fix any of it. The home fans left Gamla Ullevi without the goal they needed, and the table looks no better than it did when they arrived.
Mjällby will travel back south satisfied. Fifth place, no unnecessary damage done, the season ticking along. For Göteborg, the next fixture comes around fast and it cannot come fast enough. Something has to change. The table will not wait.
Swedish Allsvenskan standings, fixtures and results for every club in the division are at the official Allsvenskan website at allsvenskan.se.
Full-time: IFK Göteborg 0-0 Mjällby AIF. Gamla Ullevi, Gothenburg. Allsvenskan Round 9, 25 May 2026. Possession: Göteborg 45%, Mjällby 55%. Total shots: 18-13. Shots on goal: 6-5. Corners: 2-3. Yellow cards: 6 (Göteborg) 3 (Mjällby). IFK Göteborg 15th on 6 pts. Mjällby AIF 5th on 13 pts.
