Turf chess in the Black Forest?
Freiburg welcomes the Bielefeld side to kick off the second half of the season. The home side are currently third and have had the best first half of the Bundesliga in their history! However, the guests have also improved at the end of the first half of the current season. They recently recorded two wins in a row against Bochum and Leipzig.
Thanks to these three wins, Arminia’s situation in the bottom of the table has brightened. Although they still only occupy penultimate place, the gap between them and the safety zone is now only two points. For the match at the Europa-Park Stadion between Freiburg and Bielefeld, the tip is for less than three goals in the course of the match.
Freiburg – Statistics & current form
A guarantor for the as mentioned very successful first half of the SC was the stable defence. The defence has only conceded 16 goals – a joint best with league leaders FC Bayern Munich.
Vincenzo Grifo has also been reliable going forward: four goals and six assists already show his omnipresent role in the offensive play of the players from the Black Forest.
Freiburg are standard champions in the Bundesliga
Coach Christian Streich, who is now the second coach in Freiburg’s history with at least 100 wins after beating Leverkusen last matchday alongside Volker Finke, will also be pleased with his team’s standards. No team in the German top flight has scored more goals from stationary balls in the first half of the season!
Not a new quality feature: already in the previous season, no team had recorded more standard goals in that first half of the season.
Attack can still improve
Apart from that, however, the Breisgauer’s offence has room for improvement: The 28 goals are only a slightly above-average value in a league-wide comparison. This also applies to the home games, in which SC scored 1.65 goals per game.
Predicted line-up of Freiburg:
Flekken – Lienhart – Günter – Schlotterbeck – Kübler – Haberer – Höfler – Jeong – Sallai – Grifo – Höler
Last matches played by Freiburg:
1st Bundesliga
12/19 2021 – SC Freiburg 2 – 1 Bayer Leverkusen
12/15 2021 – Union Berlin 0 – 0 SC Freiburg
12/11 2021 – SC Freiburg 1 – 2 Hoffenheim
12/05 2021 – Borussia Mönchengladbach 0 – 6 SC Freiburg
11/27 2021 – Vfl Bochum 2 – 1 SC Freiburg
Bielefeld – Statistics & current form
The Kicker von der Alm have also become very strong defensively under their coach Frank Kramer. Since taking over as coach last March, the visitors have collected a whopping eleven clean sheets – no team in the Bundesliga has topped that number in that time span!
However, Arminia’s offensive remains capable of improvement: with 14 goals, the visitors have only half the output of their upcoming opponents. Furthermore, only the bottom team in the table, Fürth, scores less than Bielefeld.
Klos must pass in the attack
Fabian Klos will now also be unable to play. The top scorer in the Second Bundesliga in the 2019/20 season conceded a red card just twelve minutes after coming on as a substitute in the win at Leipzig on the last matchday and will have to miss out for two games
In view of this, the odds on neither side scoring in the clash between Freiburg and Bielefeld are also interesting. Recently, however, Arminia have improved as described above: two of the only three wins this season have come on the last two match days.
No break deficit for Arminia again?
In addition, Bielefeld are quite efficient away from home, at least in the first 45 minutes. Only in one of the eight matches they have played away from home did they have to go into the break trailing.
In light of this, the odds on the double chance in favour of the bottom team in the first half are also worth considering in the showdown between Freiburg and Bielefeld.
Predicted line-up of Bielefeld:
Kapino – Brunner – Pieper – Nilsson – Andrade – Vasiliadis – Okugawa – Schöpf – Wimmer – Serra – Krüger
Last matches played by Bielefeld:
1st Bundesliga
12/18 2021 – RB Leipzig 0 – 2 Arminia Bielefeld
12/14 2021 – Arminia Bielefeld 2 – 0 Vfl Bochum
12/11 2021 – Hertha Berlin 2 – 0 Arminia Bielefeld
12/04 2021 Arminia Bielefeld 1 – 1 1. FC Köln
11/27 2021 – Bayern Munich 1 – 0 Arminia Bielefeld
Freiburg – Bielefeld Direct Comparison / H2H Balance
In the first leg, the teams parted with a goalless draw in a somewhat heated duel with seven yellow cards. Furthermore, the home side has a slightly positive home record against Bielefeld. So far, they have hosted the East Westphalians five times on their own turf and only one of these games was lost from their point of view (2-2-1).
Freiburg – Bielefeld Tip
For the match between Freiburg and Bielefeld, the tip aims for a maximum of two goals by the final whistle. Both teams have strong defences and especially the matches of the guests have usually been low-scoring so far. With an average of 2.1 goals per match, Arminia even has the lowest average of goals.
In addition, only five of their 17 league games ended with more than 2.5 goals – again the lowest value in a league-wide comparison. Away from home, there was even only one of eight games in which more than two goals were scored.
The visitors are also expected to be a very defensively minded team. A draw would already be a success for the Kramer team against the in-form players from the Black Forest.
The prediction is backed up by the recent duels between the clubs: none of the last three meetings ended with at least three goals. Bet365 offers odds of 1.94 on the match between Freiburg and Bielefeld for this prediction.
