Telstar vs Helmond Sport Predictions

Back to back defeats against Jong PSV (2-4) and Volendam (1-0) meant Telstar were shuffled down to 16^th place in Eerste Divisie going into the festive period, and it’s fair to say that the IJmuiden outfit have found life difficult this season following a fine 6^th place finish last term. But it’s not all doom and gloom for Mike Snoei’s side as they’re still only six points shy of the Play-offs, and they’ll expect to make up some of that deficit this weekend when they take on 18^th placed Helmond Sport.

The table doesn’t read well for Telstar at the halfway stage and Mike Snoei’s side are 11 points worse off than they were at this point last season after suffering 11 defeats from 19 games.

Nonetheless, their situation isn’t quite as bad as it looks at first glance – they’re a mile clear of the bottom four and they’ve simply slipped down a congested mid-table pack due some disappointing results in December.

A couple of wins should see Telstar make up several places in the table, and they’re more than capable of doing this. They’ve still won seven of their matches this season which more or less matches half a dozen teams currently above them – they’ve simply lost too many and failed to scrap out enough draws.

Four defeats from their last six Eerste Divisie matches doesn’t exactly make great reading going into this weekend’s clash with Helmond Sport – nor their record of three wins, one draw and five defeats at IJmuiden Stadion, but they should have too much class for Rob Alflen’s strugglers.

Telstar triumphed 1-2 in the reverse fixture back in October to make it five wins from their last six meetings with Sport and they’ve made no mistake this season against all sides currently below them in the standings, with victories secured over Jong Utrecht (2-0), Dordrecht (1-4) and Jong AZ (0-2).

As the league table suggests, there is a significant gap in competitiveness between the bottom four and the rest, and although Sport have pulled off a couple of fantastic results in recent weeks (most notably claiming the scalp of Sparta Rotterdam 3-0 on match day 16), there’s little to suggest that they can land the spoils here after drawing four and losing five of their nine away fixtures in 2018/19 thus far.

Telstar are worthy favourites for this one then but the 8/13 about the hosts to win the match alone doesn’t really get the juices flowing.

We’re therefore recommending a home victory but with both teams to score too – as that’s been a feature of five out of the last six matches between the pair, whilst both teams have hit the net in four of their last five league games.

This fixture is historically quite high scoring so we’re also drawn to 3-1 in favour of Telstar in the correct score market to go alongside our main tip.