Total over 2.5
Total over 2.5
Union Berlin is having its best season ever. Urs Fischer’s team scored 51 points over the course of 27 matches, which gave them the 3rd place in the table. The effective implementation of their style of play, which is based on strong defense, has helped the club to achieve such success. In terms of the number of expected goals conceded (xga = 1.24), it is in the top three, but it pays for this with a low offensive potential (xg = 1.09).
It is worth considering that recently the “iron” lost a bit of concentration in front of their own goal and started to create more obvious goalscoring opportunities. Fischer talked about it at one of his recent press conferences.
Bochum struggles to maintain residence in the country’s elite division. In the last 5 rounds he was stronger than Cologne (2:0) and sensationally defeated Leipzig (1:0). However, defeats against direct rivals – Schalke (0:2) and Stuttgart (2:3) did not allow the “undefeated” to significantly break away from the relegation zone. They average 1.33xg per game in the current calendar year, with 1.76xg allowed.
In the upcoming meeting “Bochum” will not help the main defensive midfielder – Losilla, who became famous for yellow cards. He is in the top 3% of Bundesliga players in dogfight victories and in the top 5% in clearances.
This match has all the prerequisites to be productive. Union Berlin has started to allow sharper moments and Bochum lacks the best header. This can be a serious problem as the Irons score around 30% of their goals from set pieces.