The opening match of another exciting tripleheader in the Saudi Pro League on Friday afternoon sees the champions Al Hilal looking to bounce back from dropping their first points last week when they host a bang-out-of-form Al Ettifaq.

Al Ettifaq are without a win in six matches in the Saudi Pro League with manager Steven Gerrard beginning to come under huge pressure to turn their form around. He was booed after the loss to Al Qadisiya last week so the last thing he needs is a trip to the rampant champions.

If there is something which could help the visitors here it would be that Al Hilal played in the Champions League on Monday night and paid the price for that with Neymar picking up an injury which will keep him out of this match but this is a side who have been unbeaten since the start of last season in this league and most of those games were played without the Brazilian legend.

This is not a good matchup for Al Ettifaq. They haven’t scored in any of the last six against Al Hilal and in five of those six, the champions have covered a -1 handicap. We should expect the afternoon to begin with a comfortable home win.

The second match of Friday afternoon sees the powerful Al Ahli playing host to Al Raed with both teams looking to bounce back from defeats last week.

Al Ahli restored some confidence with a big win in the Champions League in midweek when Roberto Firmino and Riyad Mahrez were both on the scoresheet with a brace in a 5-1 win over Iraqi side Al Shorta.

Al Raed were well beaten last week. They went away to Al Khaleej and were thumped 4-0 so it will be interesting to see how they bounce back here.

In many ways, it is hard to know what to expect from either side because neither are particularly consistent. Both teams go into this one 3-2-4 for the season and need to put some results together to get up the table.

One area they have been consistent is goals. The nine Al Ahli games have contained 21 goals and it is 26 for the nine Al Raed games.

Six of the last seven Al Raed games have gone over 2.5 goals and Al Ahli have just scored five in the Champions League.

The Friday closer sees two teams who are in the top six in the table heading into the week battling it out when Al Riyadh play host to the unbeaten Al Nassr, spearheaded of course by Cristiano Ronaldo.

Generally matches between these two in recent times have been very appealing. The last four meetings have had four or more goals in them and with Ronaldo, Sadio Mane, Talisca and Otavio among others line up on one side and a team who share the goals around nicely on the other, goals should flow here.

Al Nassr were in Champions League action on Tuesday so it wouldn’t be a surprise were the home team much more of a factor in this match.

Al Riyadh matches are averaging three goals per game this season while Al Nassr are averaging more than two goals per game themselves let alone the eight in nine their opponents have scored.

With so much attacking talent on show expect three more goals to come along to round off the Friday action.