Matchday 19 of the Primeira Liga season kicks off on Saturday afternoon as Santa Clara welcome Boavista to the Estádio de São Miguel in Ponta Delgada. The hosts currently occupy the relegation play-off spot, one point above Marítimo, five points above last-placed Paços de Ferreira, and four away from safety.

The Azoreans began their season with a 0-0 draw against Casa Pia before facing off against Boavista, taking the lead within 34 minutes via Rildo but falling to 10 men as Bruno Almeida was dismissed after the break, with Yusupha Njie and Martin Navares scoring in quick succession and Cristian Gonzalez also seeing red for the visitors in extra time as Boavista secured a 2-1 victory in Porto.

After heading into the World Cup break on the back of a 3-1 win against Estoril Praia, Santa Clara would fall to three defeats and a draw in the Taça da Liga before losing 1-0 to Gil Vicente and opening 2023 with a 4-0 home defeat to Braga, prompting the dismissal of Mário Silva, who took charge midway through last season and led them out of a perilous relegation fight to secure a 7th-placed finish.

Jorge Simão took the reins with his first match seeing Santa Clara go down to 10 men after 28 minutes but nevertheless come out with their fourth clean sheet of the season and their first since November 7 in a stalemate at Portimonense. They would lose 3-0 to Benfica, falling 2-0 behind after 16 minutes, whilst their following match would see them fall behind after 75 minutes and draw level from the penalty spot shortly after. It was Casa Pia who had the last laugh, however, with Yuki Soma setting up fellow substitute Clayton for the 94th-minute winner.

Boavista, meanwhile, opened the year with a 1-0 win against Gil Vicente before falling to a 0-1 defeat to Braga, with the Axadrezados looking headed for victory only for Jô Batista to equalize in the 88th minute in a 1-1 draw against Chaves. They came away with a 4-2 win against Portimonense and sit ninth in the league and will be looking to continue an impressive run of form against Santa Clara, having won five, drawn two and lost once since the start of 2019. I’m backing Petit’s side to come away with at least a point in their trip to the Azores.

The hosts are heading into Saturday’s game after grabbing their second win in 20 games this season. Bottom-placed Ionikos managed to beat second-bottom Lamia 2-0 on the road to receive a huge boost in morale after losing all their previous five matches. Ionikos also managed to keep their second clean sheet of the season and they look to build on that momentum against a struggling Aris, who have lost four of their last five games without scoring a single goal.

The Thessaloniki-based side are expected to secure a spot in the play-offs, but they are nowhere near the top four, sitting 11 points behind fourth-placed Olympiacos. Their objective is to get back to winning ways, but most importantly they need to avoid losing again on the road after being defeated in their last four away matches on the spin.

They will struggle to grab all three points at the Nikaia stadium, where Panathinaikos drew 1-1 and AEK Athens needed a late, heroic comeback to grab a last-gasp 2-1 victory. Ionikos may be sitting bottom of the league table after picking up just 11 points from 20 matches, but they have been solid on home soil after the World Cup break, and no team has managed a comfortable victory in Nikaia since December.

Their main issue is that they have been struggling to find the back of the net, having scored just seven goals in 10 home games thus far. However, they are set to face an Aris side, who have netted just eight times on the road this season. In fact, only four teams have scored fewer goals than Alan Pardew’s men away from home in 2022/23.

This means that we should be expecting anything but an entertaining, open game on Saturday. Five of the last six games between the two teams ended with fewer than 2.5 goals scored and the same should also happen in their upcoming duel.

Grasshoppers and FC Basel reconvene on Saturday after their eight-goal thriller in the Swiss Cup on Wednesday evening. Basel just about edged that contest by a 5-3 scoreline but were pegged back twice and could only be sure of the victory when the star of the show Zeki Amdouni added his second and Basel’s fifth of the match in added time. It was an enthralling contest at the Letzigrund and all signs point to that being the case again as the two teams meet in the Super League.

Grasshoppers would’ve been disappointed with the erratic nature of their performance against Basel, especially considering that they shut them out in a 1-0 victory at home in November and because they had returned from the break with only a narrow defeat to YB and a valuable point away at a notoriously tricky opponent in Lugano. That being said, it further emphasised GC’s inability to defend this season as they failed to keep a clean sheet for the eighteenth time out of twenty-two this season, with two of those shutouts coming against lower-league opposition in the cup. The five goals conceded was also only the second time they have shipped that many goals at home since 2014, the other being a 6-0 loss to Winterthur in the Challenge League in 2020.

FC Basel have found goals hard to come by before the return from the winter break. Alex Frei’s team had scored more than one goal in a league match only six times in eighteen games before striking twice against Luzern last weekend. The five they added in the cup and the victory will only bring belief to a side that has really toiled to find consistency.

I predict another goal fest in Zurich. These two sides provided an entertaining game in midweek but neither can defend and score plenty. GC concede two goals per home game on average and concede just under that number too, so I expect goals at both ends and a high-scoring game.

The second match of the day will see Benfica take on fellow Lisbon side Casa Pia at the Estádio da Luz. After ending an 83-year absence from the Primeira Liga, the Gansos sit fifth in the table thanks to a stalwart defence that has seen them concede 17 goals thus far, a tally only bettered by Benfica (12) and Porto (11).

They closed out the year with a 2-1 win against Portimonense, taking the lead within a half-hour, conceding a penalty four minutes later, and securing the winner in the 94th minute, before falling to 10 men before the break but nevertheless securing a 0-0 draw against Porto.

Filipe Martins’ side succumbed to a 2-0 defeat at Estoril Praia, who picked up their first win since October 7, before taking the lead immediately after the break only to concede three goals in 13 minutes in a 3-1 defeat to Gil Vicente. The Geese ended January in almost the exact same way they ended December, with new arrival Yuki Soma breaking the deadlock within 75 minutes only for Gabriel Silva to equalize from the spot for Santa Clara, with Soma finding Clayton for the 94th-minute winner.

The final day of the month was a hectic one for Benfica, who travelled to Arouca without three key players in Enzo Fernández, Gonçalo Ramos and Rafa Silva. By the time the match was finished, Benfica had come away with a 3-0 victory, taking the lead within 25 minutes and doubling it in the 54th minute via a brace from João Mário and a goal from substitute Petar Musa. By the time the match was finished, Enzo Fernández had been sold to Chelsea for a British transfer record £106.8 million.

Benfica were in second gear for most of the match with just five shots – the fewest they’ve scored in any non-Clássico in the league since 2013/14 – but nevertheless picked up their 16th victory of the season. Having played one match more than their competitors, they sit eight points above second-placed Porto, 12 above Braga, 15 above Sporting and 20 above Casa Pia.

They’ll be missing two of their biggest attacking weapons once again, having beaten Casa Pia 1-0 in August via a goal from Ramos, and it remains to be seen whether Roger Schmidt decides to go for the same line-up he used in Arouca or give an opportunity to Musa, but I think they should have enough to come away with a victory.

Benfica have dropped points at home on just one occasion this season – a 2-2 draw to Sporting – and have scored 10 goals in their last four league matches, but I’m nevertheless expecting Casa Pia to keep things fairly close. Only three of their matches this season have seen over 3.5 goals scored – I’m expecting this match to follow that pattern. Both teams will be preparing for a match-up in the Taça de Portugal quarterfinals on Thursday, with Benfica facing off against Braga and Casa Pia taking on second-tier Nacional.