Icelandic Football
2011-07-09 - Breidablik vs Thor Akureyri
A Sports Betting Pick by Cornholio
Football : Icelandic top league : Round 10
Saturday July 9 2011, 16:00 (GMT)
After a very slow start of the season the goalscoring seems to be picking up. 9 out of 11 games in the last two rounds went over 2.5 goals and a 39 goals were scored.
In this game we have two sides with very bad defenses but the difference is that while one of those sides has a good offense the other one does not.
Breidablik (7th 3-3-3 14:16)
Breidablik seem to be losing the battle in defending their crown. After the 2-2 draw against Vikingur they now sit in the 7th place with 12 points, 9 points behind leader Valur and 8 points behind KR who have a game in hand.
In the game against Vikingur their striker, Kristinn Steindorsson, was once again their best player even though he didn't score. He is currently the top goalscorer in the league with 8 goals and all of them coming on Breidablik's home ground.
What could provide to be important for Breidablik is that their new Australian striker, Dylan Jacob Macallister, finally scored his first league goal against Vikingur. Wether this will initiate some more scoring for him no one can say. At least it didn't for Grindavik's Scottish striker, Robbie Winters.
In the game against Vikingur Breidablik's offense didn't seem organised enough where Macallister often was out of place out on the flanks instead of being inside the box where he is strongest. This will probably be fixed in their game against Thor Akureyri.
Another thing Breidablik really have to fix is their defense. It's simply terrible and keep on conceding goals and actually they haven't kept a clean sheet all season, conceding 16 goals in total. Fortunately for Breidablik they can score a lot too and they have scored in all but one game, against an extreamly strong Valur's defense.
At home Breidablik have been quite strong with a record of 3 1 1 but still conceding 7 of those 16 goals on their own turf. If Breidablik can not keep a clean sheet against Thor Akureyri at home, a side who doesn't score many goals, then one will start to wonder if they will ever keep a clean sheet all season.
Thor Akureyri (9th 2-2-5 8:17)
After a decent run where Thor Akureyri only lost 1 game out of 4 beating IBV and drawing against FH at home they were brought back to earth losing 0-3 to a strong Valur side.
Thor Akureyri currently sit in the 9th place with 8 points and a record of 2-2-5, 8:17. Away they are 1 1 3, 4:10, losing the three games twice with a two goal margin and once with a three goal margin. It is highly likely that they will have a very tough time against a strong Breidablik offense.
Since Thor changed their tactics early on in the season in the way to let the oponents have the ball and control the game it's likely they will have to sit back and try to counter on the fastbreak. Wether thy will be able to sustain the pressure hard to say, but it sounds unlikely.
Thor Akureyri will simply have to go into this game with their minds set on the fact that they have nothing to lose, but all to win. This won't be one of the deciding games for them in the season so anything else than a loss will be pure bonus for them.
Head to head
Nothing really of any use here since it's a long time since Thor played in the top league with Breidablik. They met twice in the pre-season cup in 2009 and 2011 with a 1-1 draw and Breidablik winning 4-1 respectevely.
