Round eight of the 2023-24 Super Lig season sees city rivals Besiktas and Istanbulspor go head-to-head at the Tupras Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The teams have made highly-contrasting starts to their respective league campaigns, but neither will want to come away empty-handed from this weekend's meeting.
Match preview
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Besiktas were beaten in their second Europa Conference League group-stage encounter, which ended in a 3-2 defeat against Lugano on Thursday.
Goals in both halves from Vincent Aboubakar looked to have put Burak Yilmaz's men in cruise control before a late capitulation saw Ignacio Aliseda and Shkelqim Vladi restore parity moments before Eric Bailly put the ball past his own goalkeeper to turn the game on its head.
Prior to that, the Black Eagles claimed a 2-0 victory over Konyaspor, which saw them move up into fourth in the Turkish Super Lig table, albeit still a whopping eight points behind leaders Fenerbahce.
Next up is the challenge of an opposing outfit who are without a victory in the last six meetings between the teams across all competitions.
Having recently suffered a first home defeat of the season, Sunday's hosts now set out to avoid back to back losses in front of their fans for the first time since 2022.
Istanbulspor suffered a fourth consecutive defeat as they fell to a 2-1 loss against Antalyaspor when the teams faced off at Necmi Kadioglu Stadyumu on Saturday.
Fatih Tekke's men got their noses in front through Valon Ethemi before quickfire second-half goals from Adam Buksa completed the turnaround.
With two points picked up from six matches so far, the Bulls sit bottom but one in the standings, four points adrift of safety having played one game fewer.
Currently with the joint-fewest goals scored away from home this term, Sunday's visitors will need to up the ante at the attacking end of the pitch to stand any chance of coming away with a positive result.
Team News
Twenty-four-year-old Gedson Fernandes is unavailable for Besiktas with a muscle injury and will not play any part in this weekend's contest.
Tayyip Sanuc is also ruled out of contention for the home side with a knee problem, while Emrecan Uzunhan misses out due to personal reasons.
Istanbulspor's Valon Ethemi was pleased to have finally opened his account for the season last time out, and the striker will be aiming to pick up where he left off.
Ivory Coast international Simon Deli remains a doubt for this weekend having missed the visitors' last two games through a muscle injury.
Besiktas possible starting lineup:
Gunok; Masuaku, Colley, Uysal, Rosier; Hadziahmetovic, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ucan; Tosun, Ghezzal, Aboubakar
Istanbulspor possible starting lineup:
Jensen; Yasar, Yesil, Erdogan, Duhaney; Sarikaya, Loshaj; Ethemi, Mamadou, Gultekin; Yilmaz
We say: Besiktas 3-1 Istanbulspor
The gulf in class between the teams is significant, and Istanbulspor have a mammoth task on their hands to get anything from Sunday's game. We are tipping Besiktas to cruise to a routine win.
For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.
Top tip
Adepoju Marvellous
