Eerste Divisie: ADO Den Haag vs Roda JC! With 5 key players injured, is the increasingly injury-plagued Roda struggling too much?

Our first topic today isEerste Divisie: ADO Den Haag vs Roda JC!

Although Roda is currently unbeaten in eight games and appears strong, their playing style has a very high injury risk.

Look at their injury reports since October — the number is so high it’s truly shocking.Let’s discuss whether this will greatly reduce their combat effectiveness.

What is certain today isthat Roda will have 5 players unavailable to play.

These 5 players are all essential talents.

This season’s leader in assists, tackles, clearances, blocks, shots, and last season’s top in assists, ratings, chance creation, dribbles, interceptions...

While stats can sometimes be misleading, the coach consistently fields them every match and gives them plenty of minutes, showing how much the team relies on them.

Missing one or two players might be manageable, but suddenly losing five? That impact cannot be small.

Besides the loss of quality on paper, the team’s chemistry must also be considered!

Since all five have been recently absent, missing one against Cambuur, one against Willem II, one against Den Bosch, and two against Almere City... the team hasn’t had time to adjust at all.

That’s why Roda’s coach Van der Sels said they really need the international break to rest, as the whole squad is quite tired, injuries are piling up, and the schedule has been very tight — they especially need time for rest, training, and cohesion.

We can see Roda’s recent performances are declining; in their last match against Utrecht U21,they created very few scoring chances and only managed a lucky world-class goal to snatch a point.

What level is Utrecht? They are the second worst away team in the Eerste Divisie! Before drawing with Roda, they lost 5 out of 6 away games with an 83.33% defeat rate. For Roda to rely on a long shot at home against such an opponent is surprising.

The official Eerste Divisie match report even stated — in the first half, Utrecht handled things easily and barely exerted themselves defensively.

This clearly is not Roda’s normal level; their fighting power has obviously dropped.

Meanwhile, a possession-based team like Den Haag has an advantage: it’s less physically demanding.

They currently lead the Eerste Divisie with 62.5% possession and average 424 successful passes per game, also first in the league,being very skilled at using passing to stretch the opponent’s defense.

Moving the ball is less tiring than running players around, right? So despite the tight schedule, apart from the young player De Ruit who got injured in early October, they basically have no injuries.

Therefore, on the surface, this match is a clash between the first and the third place.

But the first-place team is almost at full strength with a powerful lineup.

While the third-place team is a weakened version missing 5 key players.

So when we see how ridiculously confident the experts are, it’s understandable.

Do you think Den Haag can satisfy their fans? Personally, I expect them to win by at least two goals.

Alright, for other matches today, I will still send my written analysis tonight. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. Let’s “watch and understand the game” together, don’t miss it!

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