Winless in their last three matches, Emmen prepare for the visit of Fortuna Sittard to De Oude Meerdijk on Saturday in round 21 of the 2022-23 Eredivisie season.
On the other hand, the away side make the journey aiming to continue their upturn in form, which has seen them pick up seven of the last nine points available.
Match preview
Fortuna Sittard were denied a third victory on the spin following a goalless stalemate against Sparta Rotterdam at the Fortuna Sittard Stadion on Friday.
Julio Velazquez's men had their backs against the wall for large spells of the contest, but they managed to come away with a hard-fought point.
As a result, the Fortunezen have moved up to 11th place in the Eredivisie table, albeit a whopping 10 points adrift of the last European spot.
Next up is the challenge of an opposing outfit with just one defeat in the most recent nine meetings between the teams across all competitions.
Having lost just one of their last five away outings leading up to Saturday's contest, the visitors set out to record consecutive league victories on the road for the first time since May.
Emmen were dumped out of the KNVB Beker round of 16 courtesy of a 3-1 defeat against PSV Eindhoven at the Philips Stadion on Wednesday evening.
A first-half double from Jarrad Branthwaite left Dick Lukkien's men with a mountain to climb, and despite Mark Diemers pulling one back, Luuk de Jong put the result beyond doubt in the 76th minute.
Prior to that, the Kannibals played out a 2-2 stalemate against Vitesse in their last league encounter, which saw them remain 16th in the standings.
Currently on a nine-match unbeaten run on home turf, Saturday's hosts will be aiming to secure another impressive result in front of their fans.
Team News
Emmen's trio of Jeff Hardeveld, Mart Lieder and Maikel Kieftenbeld are currently down with knee injuries, ruling them out of contention for this weekend's clash.
Richairo Zivkovic is also unavailable due to a muscle problem, while 29-year-old Oussama Darfalou misses out again due to a niggling ankle injury.
Despite seeing his four-game scoring streak for Fortuna Sittard come to an end last time out, Burak Yilmaz remains one to keep an eye on here.
Ximo Navarro and Roel Janssen are both injury doubts for the away side, but the former is drawing increasingly closer to making a return to action.
Emmen possible starting lineup:
Van der Hart; Te Wierik, Araujo, Veldmate, Burnet, Bouchouari; Diemers, Veendorp, El Messaoudi; Bernadou, Assehnoun
Fortuna Sittard possible starting lineup:
Pandur; Cox, Siovas, Guth, Pinto; Ferati, Bistrovic; Cordoba, Ozyakup, Embalo; Yilmaz
We say: Emmen 2-1 Fortuna Sittard
Emmen have dominated this fixture to a large extent and the odds are in their favour to emerge victorious once again. While we expect Fortuna to put up a decent fight, we fancy the hosts to carry the day come the sound of the full-time whistle.
For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.
