Vissel Kobe vs Vegalta Sendai 08/08/20

08 August 2020

Vissel Kobe and Vegalta Sendai will lock horns at the Noevir Stadium this weekend in a potentially high-scoring J1 League affair. In fact, three of their last four top-flight H2Hs held here have produced over 2.5 goals.

After drawing a blank in two consecutive J1 League outings (D1, L1), Vissel secured a 3-2 away win over Sapporo last time out, meaning two of their three top-flight wins this season saw over 2.5 goals and both teams scoring. However, both of their league defeats this season came on home turf, with each seeing a full-time margin of at least two goals and ‘Ushi’ fail to get on the scoresheet. That’s a sharp contrast to Kobe’s recent fortunes against Sendai at home. Indeed, Thorsten Fink’s men have won all three of their previous top-flight H2Hs held at this venue (D1), finding the net in both halves in each and scoring a total of eight goals across those successes.

Meanwhile, it’s been a quite frustrating start to the 2020/21 campaign for the visitors, who have won just once in the opening eight J1 League fixtures (D3, L4). Moreover, they come into this meeting on a run of three consecutive league defeats, two of which saw them concede over 2.5 second-half goals. Sendai’s defensive woes are the reason they have only one clean sheet after eight league matches. In fact, only three teams have shipped more league goals than Takashi Kiyama’s side (15), with 66.67% (ten) of them arriving after halftime. Improving that record will be quite daunting for Sendai, given they’ve conceded at least two goals in five of their last six J1 League H2H clashes against Kobe (D1, L5).