Cangzhou Mighty Lions play host to Shenzhen on Wednesday at the Wuhua County Olympic Sports Centre in round nine of the 2022 Chinese Super League season.
The teams will head into Thursday's encounter looking to secure a much-needed pick-me-up having both endured a torrid run of results lately.
Match preview
Cangzhou played out a second share of the spoils in three outings following a 1-1 stalemate against Chengdu Rongcheng on Monday.
Svetozar Sapuric's men went behind to Min-Woo Kim's first-half strike before restoring parity through Oscar Maritu in the 77th minute.
The Mighty Lions have slipped down to 14th place in the league table, but they still boast a relatively healthy four-point gap over the bottom three.
Next up is the challenge of an opposing outfit who are unbeaten in five of the last six meetings between the teams dating back to 2020.
Winless in all of their four home games since the turn of the year, Thursday's hosts set out to end a barren run in front of their fans and get their season back on track.
Shenzhen were beaten for the third time in four matches courtesy of a 1-0 defeat versus Meizhou Hakka at the Wuhua Hengpi Football Town on Sunday.
Off the back of a drab opening 45 minutes, Guokang Chen broke the deadlock in the early exchanges of the second half and that was enough to sink Lee Jang-Soo's men.
With 10 points amassed from a possible 24 this term, the Youth Army are 12th in the standings right now, two points and two places clear of their next opponents.
Having shipped a whopping seven goals in their most recent three games on the road, Thursday's visitors will need to turn things around defensively to stand any chance of coming away with a positive result here.
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Team News
Thirty-year-old Kaimu Zheng is a major injury doubt for this one after he sat out Cangzhou's most recent outing through a muscle problem.
Oscar Maritu has now directly played a part in half of his side's six goals this term, and the Congolese is definitely one to keep an eye on.
Top scorer Frank Acheampong was a huge miss for Shenzhen FC last time out, but the forward is expected to feature in this one.
Acheampong grabbed the winner in the last involvement between Thursday's opponents, and he will be looking to come up trumps once again.
Cangzhou Mighty Lions possible starting lineup:
Shao; Liu, Yang, Yang; Yang, Lin, Abdusalam, Jiang; Iskandar, Ma, Maritu
Shenzhen possible starting lineup:
Zhang; Huang, Lim, Zhang, Yuan; Jiang, Dai, Zhang, Li, Gao; Acheampong
We say: Cangzhou Mighty Lions 0-1 Shenzhen
Cangzhou are the joint-lowest scorers on home turf this season, and we can see them coming up short at the attacking end once again. We are also tipping the away side to scrape a narrow win at the end of the 90 minutes.
For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.
Top tip
Adepoju Marvellous
