AZ Reserves vs Twente Predictions

Match day 15 in Eerste Divisie concludes in Alkmaar on Monday night as Twente visit AFAS Stadion to take on Jong AZ. Following Friday evening’s results, Twente have temporarily dropped to 6^th in the table and the pressure will be on the Enschede outfit here to get back into the Play-off places. With the hosts currently 17^th in the standings after just one win from 14, the visitors are solid odds-on shots to get the victory they need.

With just three wins from their last seven Eerste Divisie games, it’s been a frustrating few weeks for Twente. Marino Pusic’s side have slipped off the automatic promotion pace and need to find more if they’re to contend, after being bested by leaders Go Ahead Eagles and 3^rd placed Den Bosch in the last fortnight.

Twente were beaten 2-1 in s-Hertogenbosch two weeks ago by The Blue White Dragons and succumbed to their third home defeat of the campaign on match day 14 as Go Ahead pinched a 0-1 victory at De Grolsch Veste.

It’s deflating for Twente that they lost both of those key fixtures by the narrowest of margins, but the reality is that with just one automatic promotion berth available, there’s very little room for mistakes at the top of the second tier.

Twente’s home form simply has to improve if they’re going to be in the shake up come the end of the season, and they have to start beating the useful teams in this division more regularly to stay in contention.

Their away record is decent on the face of things with ten points accrued from five outings prior to that loss at Den Bosch, but it’s worth noting that they beat teams placed 14^th (1-3 vs Telstar), 18^th (1-6 vs Jong Utrecht) and 19^th (0-2 vs Dordrecht) in the table, whilst they only managed draws at 16^th placed FC Eindhoven (1-1) and bottom club Helmond Sport (2-2).

Whilst it’s hard to be too critical of those efforts, this Twente side is pretty unproven and untested on their travels, which makes their odds of around 4/7 for Monday’s contest look far too skinny – especially considering that nearly half of Jong AZ’s games this term have ended level.

Jong seem to have played much better this season than their 17^th place implies, but they’ve struggled to convert their draws into wins after conceding far too many goals.

The Alkmaar outfit have seen six of their 14 league fixtures all square, and they’ve shipped 29 goals so far at an average of just over two per game.

Jong will continue to find themselves at the wrong end of the table unless they can find some defensive stability, and it’s hard to see them doubling their tally of wins here, after three successive 3-1 defeats against Jong PSV, Oss and NEC – despite our feelings that the visitors are too short in the betting.

So the standout wager for us here is over 2.5 goals with both teams to score, a feature in five of AZ’s seven home matches this term and in four of Twente’s six away games. The sides have only failed to score three times between them this term in 28 combined fixtures, whilst Jong have failed to keep a clean sheet at all so far in 2018/19 (Twente have kept just two clean sheets in 14).

This looks like it will be a really attacking and entertaining fixture which could result in another draw for Jong, so it’s 2-2 for us in the correct score market.