Kakkonen Pohjoinen overview part #2

Kerho 07

SJK has really flexed their financial muscles in the last few years, so it's no wonder that their reserve team made an immediate jump to Kakkonen. The team that played in Kolmonen last year would likely have had no trouble staying in Kakkonen, as the squad contained many former and experienced SJK/Sepsi-78/TP-Seinäjoki players. However, from an outsider's point of view the current list of players does not look that intimidating. Ylinen, Kujala, Asunmaa, Muurimäki and Kukkanen are familiar names from past years but the rest are totally unknown outside Seinäjoki (though Bouroussi's promotion-crushing goal cannot be forgotten http://youtu.be/0lDvwrBFNMg?t=2m11s).  In their training matches Kerho 07 (atrocious name, btw) has been pretty good but the line-ups have varied wildly, so rather than taking any wild guesses it's likely easier to just wait and see what guys actually line up on the field in their first match against PS Kemi. But for the sake of completeness, I'll assume that with SJK's resources and overflowing roster, SJK/2 will finish among the middle pack of teams that also includes TP-47, FC YPA and PK-37.

PK-37

The second half of the 2011 season was not kind for PK-37. Wins were hard to come by, and most of them (2/3) came against totally out of form teams. What saved them in that year was the farm contract with KuPS, which provided the kind of players like Kaivonurmi, Hynynen, Rönkkö, Vilmunen and Williams who almost single-handedly won them enough points in the first half of the season so that PK-37 didn't have to worry too much about relegation. The reason why that was worth a mention is that the farm contract is again in place, so there could be some nasty surprises depending on which side you bet. But truth to be told, even without it PK-37 would have somewhat easy to predict to end up in the similar positions as last year. One of the 2011 saviours, Rönkkö-Sirviö is gone but all he did last year was to rack up Veikkauspörssi medals, not goals, so Kivilä from TP-47 should be able to replace him without problems (for what I understand they're fairly similar profiled players). However, the departures of some regulars (Leskinen, Junnilainen (gk), Kärkkäinen, Leinonen) and no new players being signed lead me to believe that PK-37 will (again) not pose any real risk for the top trio of GBK, PS Kemi and VIFK. On the other hand, the amount of offense that Leskinen and such provided was so minimal that somebody else is bound to score the goals, and like the stats also helply indicate, PK-37 under Lähderinne will probably be remembered more for their defensive achievements rather than constant goal fests. Like many others, PK-37 is still looking for some new players, but unless some heavyweights arrive (from KuPS or elsewhere) this is as middle table team as you can get. Unless the players that left had some intangibles that were not apparent in the statistics, PK-37 shouldn't be one of the first teams that will be involved in the relegation battle either. PK-37 on the whole, other than Kivilä and Lähderinne, is filled with players that definitely won't be picked in Best of Kakkonen XI's, but the fact that they're still playing in Kakkonen should tell that you don't always need the best players to hang on with the others. 

KPV

This is more or less the same team (only a couple of players have left) that struggled to the finish line last year, so it isn't difficult to predict the same thing to happen this year too. Starting from the positive things, the team still possesses the legendary Myntti and another KPV icon Niko Kalliokoski might still continue his playing career. Additionally, the team is quite young, so some improvement could happen (and did I say almost everyone is from Kokkola?), but that's just about it. Young Laitinen came out of nowhere to score 7 goals but outside Myntti nobody really shined in that department. KPV's training matches haven't gone that bad as they've for example drawn with GBK once, beaten PK-37 and just barely lost against AC Kajaani. Still, there looks to be so many better teams (i.e. teams that showed better performances last year, teams who have signed up quality players, or whichever way you want to put it) this year that KPV is very likely to be one of the main relegation candidates unless they themselves hit the transfer market or if a bunch of players don't raise their level of play considerably.

Tervarit

After an agonizing wait of two years Kakkonen is finally back in Oulu. This is not the first time Tervarit has played in this level, but it probably goes without saying that you shouldn't look at any h2h stats as the team is quite different now. Tervarit hasn't bothered to put up any kind of an official squad list, so in that sense predicting them is much harder than what it is with all the other teams. Good starting point would be to say that nearly all of the players that have been involved with them during the winter have played in Kakkonen at some stages of their respective careers. But of course there are some catches; some have played at this level ages ago while the others were nothing more than a squad or rotation level players. Names like Rova, Palosaari (one of the best players in Kakkonen ca. 10 years ago), Koskinen, Koski, Makowski, Lehtiniemi, Tervo, Aaltonen, Pähtilä, Pikkarainen, Ahonpää, Fredriksson, Rizvani, Kuusirati look to be fairly sure to play in the summer too. Dozens of other players have made appearances in their training matches, among the most interesting of them Ogbuefi (PS Kemi), Juuso Majava (AC Oulu), Vilppola (TP-47), Heiskanen (TP-47) and Chijioke Festus (HauPa). If everyone actually signed for them, Tervarit could in truth look like pretty good team on the paper but as of now there too many other teams with more clearer situations that I couldn't justify ranking them any higher. Training matches don't really offer anything interesting either, as the line-ups have changed a lot and few of the wins came against teams playing with substitutes/2nd team. Like mentioned before, there's a lot of Kakkonen experience all around there but either it happened a long time ago or the players were involved in teams that got relegated, which in itself is not really a promising sign. Tervarit is coached by Tapio Haapaniemi who flopped badly in Santa Claus a few years ago, and him being closely associated with Malinen doesn't sound the best fit for a relegation battle. However, it has to be said that it's extremely unlikely that any type of Virkiä or Korsholm scenario will occur, but in the current situation Tervarit looks to be a bottom half team.

ORP

Real life can be cruel sometimes meaning that even the Santa Claus can go bankrupt. While the guys from Rovaniemi were busy making funny videos for foreign tv channels, OPS-j sneaked in through the backdoor and claimed the  suddenly open place in Kakkonen for this year. AC Kajaani ran straight through from Kolmonen to Ykkönen but it can said with a certainty that neither one of the Oulu-based teams will do the same. At the moment ORP looks to be the weaker one of the two, and in the first meeting between those two Tervarit overpowered them in the second half and won convincingly 3-1. There are only a few names that are familiar to the followers of Palloliitto leagues. Rami Ahonen scored five goals for Jazz (Kakkonen) in 2011 and was the second-best goal scorer in Kolmonen's northern group last year so he'll likely be one of the key players this year. That "golden" boot in Kolmonen was won by ORP's Karjalainen, who has gotten some playing time in OPS' Ykkönen squad but didn't impress at all. Rian de Souza played in Pallo-Iirot half a decade ago and he's obviously being advertised as a high-profile player. Haval Panahi is an Iranian player, but any information on him is scarce. Other players worth a mention are Tenkula, who just a few years back played a few games in Veikkausliiga, Sassi, who is one of the journeymen (TP-47, OPA, HauPa etc. ) that Tervarit is full of, and Kåla, who started half of FC YPA games in 2012. Last but not least, the goalkeeper situation looks fairly good, with experienced Kalle Rönkkö and Alakulju being the first options (and there are three other goalkeepers too if I've understood correctly, so..). ORP head coach Viitanen did excellent work with OLS in the start of new millenium but any achievements after that have been minimal, however, ORP could have done a lot worse and there's also some continuity because Viitanen was their coach last year too. But all in all, when even the players listed above are not exactly high quality it's fairly easy to predict ORP to end up near the bottom because the rest of the squad is filled with practically unknown players that have not played anywhere higher than Kolmonen (with few exceptions).