Two sides locked on points in the Belarusian Premier League face off at Yunost Stadium on Friday as Slavia Mozyr play host to Gorodeya.
Slavia have won just one of their last six league matches to drop down to 11th, one place above their equally out-of-form opponents.
Match preview
© Reuters
Since recording back-to-back victories over BATE and Brest in the opening few weeks of the season, Slavia have collected just five points from the last 18 on offer.
Mihail Martsinovich's men, who finished eighth in their first season back at this level last time out, are seven points off the dropzone and the same distance off the top three.
The same goes for Gorodeya, who have also struggled for victories in recent weeks, last picking up all three points against Energetik-BGU on April 16.
Since then Oleg Radushko's side have lost to BATE and Torpedo-BelAZ, either side of playing out successive draws with Rukh Brest and FC Minsk.
Neither team enter this fixture in the best of form, then, and it could be a low-scoring affair given that Gorodeya are involved.
No team in the division has scored fewer goals than Gorodeya's six across the opening nine fixtures, while up the other end they have conceded 10 times.
Three of those goals against came away to Torpedo in last week's 3-1 reverse, a day before Slavia's 2-0 loss to Shakhtyor Soligorsk.
In fact, the hosts have now gone back-to-back games without scoring, having also fired a blank in their recent stalemate with Torpedo.
Despite the loss of form for both sides, though, the tight nature of the division means that victory on Friday could lift them as high as seventh.
Defeat, on the other hand, and the bottom two - Belshina and Smolevichi - will have a chance to close the gap slightly.
Slavia's league form: DLLWDL
Slavia's form (all competitions): LLLWDL
Gorodeya's league form: WWLDDL
Head To Head
Gorodeya were 1-0 winners when the sides last met nearly eight months ago thanks to Artem Arkhipov's late goal.
Slavia were also defeated by the same scoreline in last season's reverse fixture and are winless against Gorodeya in their last three encounters.
We say: Slavia Mozyr 0-0 Gorodeya
Both teams have struggled to pick up victories in recent weeks. Gorodeya also struggle for goals and Slavia have fired blanks in back-to-back matches, so we are backing a low-scoring draw.
Daniel Lewis
Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Slavia Mozyr win with a probability of 44.7%. A win for Gorodeya had a probability of 28.21% and a draw had a probability of 27.1%.
The most likely scoreline for a Slavia Mozyr win was 1-0 with a probability of 12.35%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-1 (8.79%) and 2-0 (8.5%). The likeliest Gorodeya win was 0-1 (9.28%), while for a drawn scoreline it was 1-1 (12.77%). The actual scoreline of 1-1 was predicted with a 12.8% likelihood.
