VPS v Rovaniemi

Looking at the 8th round of Veikkausliiga, we have a match between two struggling teams, Rovaniemi and VPS, who sit at 9th and 10th place in the league. Marking the 2nd h2h match of 2019, a win here could bring one of the teams closer to the top 6 and a promotion battle at the end of the season.

Rovaniemi come into the upcoming fixture as the 9th team in the league with a 2-1-5 record and 7 points. While they started off the season well, their recent form was, to say the least. Looking at their last 5 fixtures, Rovaniemi managed to win against HIFK (1:0), but failed to do the same against Mariehamn (2:0), KuPS (0:1), Inter Turku (3:0) and most recently Ilves (0:1). This results in a disappointing 1-0-4 record in the last 5 and we can only guess when their bad form will end.

The home side, VPS come into the match after a 1:3 defeat against Mariehamn in the cup match. The final result was not what VPS was hoping to achieve, especially if we take into consideration they have been historically a better side than their opponents. Even the match started well for VPS, who scored the opening goal in the 22nd minute. However, once they scored the goal, VPS simply lost their rhythm and started underperforming. Mariehamn took the chance and equalized only 12 minutes later, to which they added another goal before the 1st half ended.

The 2nd half was not much different, with the hosts proving they are the better side and deserve to advance into the finals of Suomen Cup.

The downfall of VPS was their terrible performance in the offensive end, where they failed to create any promising chances. They were simply without any idea what to do with the ball, which was the case in some of their previous matches.

While we can hardly find anything promising looking at how Rovaniemi performed recently, it's the questionable offensive strength of VPS that is the main topic of discussion here. In their most recent match, they proved once more their offence is rather harmless, which is also the reason why they drew 6 out of their last 7 matches. Rovaniemi on the other side have issues of their own, which much like in VPS lay in their offence. Looking at a match between two teams struggling to perform up to par in the offensive end, I can not see this one going heavily one or the other way. While I do believe VPS should be a better side in normal circumstances, the fact that Rovaniemi had a few more days of rest should be enough to keep this one close and potentially even turn it into their favour. VPS are as of now in a terrible form, and with injured players, they seem weakened enough for Rovaniemi grab all 3 points.

Prediction: Rovaniemi +0.00 Asian Handicap