League leaders Heracles Almelo take on TOP Oss on Saturday and they are heavy favourites to win this game. Heracles have lost three games so far this season and are four points clear of the number three, the highest team that won’t get direct promotion, so things are going well. Especially their firepower up front has been impressive, they scored in 14 out of 15 games so far and are the highest scoring team in the league.

With the Scandinavian front three, they terrorise almost every defence. Nikolai Laursen is on seven goals and five assists, Emil Hansson scored eight goals and recorded seven assists and Samuel Armenteros is on six goals and two assists. All three would be fine playing for a team in the top flight and against TOP Oss that should be plenty for a victory with a decent amount of goals, but the defence has been a bit problematic recently, as they concede almost every game.

TOP Oss are going through a pretty average season, they pick up their points here and there and are unlikely to finish bottom, but they have little chance to make the play-offs. With the Heracles attack playing well, but TOP seeing their opportunities to score as well, I suspect there will be plenty of goals in this game.

NAC Breda started the season well, but have completely lost it in recent weeks. And it doesn’t seem to get better soon, as they are receiving PEC Zwolle. PEC seem to be beyond their dip and won their last two games with big numbers. Eindhoven were sent home with a 5-2 defeat and TOP Oss took a 5-0 beating in their own stadium. That means confidence is good in Zwolle. They were third last week, but were gifted the second place after bottom of the table Jong FC Utrecht surprisingly beat PEC’s promotion rivals MVV Maastricht.

19-year-old midfielder Younes Taha is taking a more prominent role recently and was very important in the victories with three goals in the last two games. Striker Lennart Thy also played an important role with two goals and two assists. As mentioned before, NAC Breda’s reality is very different. They started the season well with three wins from the first four games, but only recorded two victories in the 11 matches since then. They have a couple of tough fixtures coming up as well, so the pressure is mounting on manager Robert Molenaar.

The defence has been shaky and they aren’t really creating any chances. They will probably fill up the stadium this Saturday, but they’ve recorded more away wins than home victories this season, so a full stadium hasn’t been giving the advantage they’d hope for, so I’d put my money on PEC to take the full three points here.