Den Haag VS Eindhoven FC

Den Haag welcome visitors from Eindhoven for first leg of quarter-finals early Wednesday morning Beijing time. A lot is at stake here as the teams are fighting to be promoted to the highest level, Eredivisie. Dutch football is in general very offensive, with more goals than in most good European leagues. Players concentrate on offensive skills, controlling and passing the ball forward from a very young age already. Goals are expected here but I see this match as more low-scoring than the betting market does. Odds on under 2.5 goals and the draw have already been dropping a lot with the sharpest online bookmakers that offer the highest of limits. The drop should have been even bigger in my opinion though. Neither team wants to lose the first leg and I expect clearly more defensive, even cautious by Dutch standards, football here. Especially for Eindhoven FC a draw would probably be satisfactory result in Den Haag.. This would bring my fans and me yet another winner with the +0.5 goals handicap option. The probability of winning is 69.5%.

The visitors are the better team by raw class, but not by a large margin of course. The finished better in the Eerste Divisie – 3rd and grabbed 71 points. Their goal difference was good – 69:43. There are clearly better than the hosts in terms of defensive skill and structure. Den Haag, on the other hand, finished 4th with 67 points. They allowed ten more goals than the visitors but also scored more though. Overall, I see the teams pretty equal offensively. The hosts finished the league with a horrible performance against Emmen away from home losing 0-3.Yes, Emmen are a very good team but it was still disappointing from the hosts.. They only recorded two shots on target and had 33% ball possession.. They would have to improve from the latest matches to win here.. They did beat Breda 2-1 at home in their most recent matches in the quarter finals - and 4-2 on aggregate but did not convince me. In the 2nd leg, Breda had 56% ball possession and recorded more than double the scoring chances compared to Den Haag – 13. Eindhoven, on the other hand, were better than I would have expected against De Graafschap, qualifying 4-2 on aggregate. Moreover, they have not lost any of their latest five matches. They are under-valued by the betting market, and we will take advantage of this, of course! Hosts are missing several players here which of course does not help..