FC Eindhoven vs Maastricht Predictions

FC Eindhoven will be out to register their first points of the 2018/19 Eerste Divisie campaign when they take on MVV Maastricht at Jan Louwers Stadion this Friday evening.

The 42 year residents of the Dutch second tier have made their worst start in living memory with four defeats from four, and manager David Nascimento could be on borrowed time, despite his positive intervention last season after joining the club in January.

Although it’s early days, Eindhoven fans will be glad that relegation to Tweede Divisie is again frozen this term, though a finish anywhere around the foot of the table would be deemed unacceptable.

The slight positive for Friday’s hosts is that they’ve been relatively competitive in each fixture so far, and they’ve come up against table toppers Go Ahead Eagles and likely promotion candidates Sparta Rotterdam who came down from Eredivisie in 2017/18.

They lost those games 1-2 and 2-0 respectively, the latter arriving last weekend, and will at least feel they have a realistic chance of gaining a positive result this week against an MVV side that finished just two places above them last term.

However, Eindhoven simply have to address their problems in defence and they cannot hope to move off the bottom of the table anytime soon if they keep conceding two goals per game. They had the worst defensive record in Eerste Divisie last season with 83 goals leaked and teams right now know they’ll be given plenty of chances to win the game.

Visitors MVV hardly possess a potent strike force though, with just four goals scored in their four league outings thus far. That’s an ordinary ratio for this high scoring division, and they were one of Eerste Divisie’s lower scoring sides in 2017/18 with just 57 registered across 38 matches.

Ron Elsen’s men are 13^th in the early standings heading into this week’s game, and have four points on the board following a 0-1 success at Telstar on match day two and a 2-2 draw at Almere City last weekend.

Those results show improved away form from the Maastricht outfit who lost 12 of their 19 games on the road last term, and they’ll view this encounter with pointless Eindhoven as a chance to gain more confidence on their travels.

Eindhoven have got the better of MVV in recent times though, winning three and drawing two of the previous six meetings – including a 2-0 victory here back in March.

The experienced second tier campaigners have to get off the mark at some point, and we think they can scrap out a win here against an unconvincing MVV team who still need to prove that they can compete consistently outside of De Geusselt.

There’s a bit of value in taking the hosts here from an angle that they’ve had a rough run of fixtures, and based on the recent head to head.

It should be a pretty middling affair in terms of goals (eleven between the teams in the last five meetings) so we’re not going for anything adventurous in the correct score market. MVV should be good for a goal with Eindhoven’s defensive issues so we’ll opt for a 2-1 victory in favour of David Nascimento’s charges.