FC Groningen v Fortuna Sittard

Eredivisie Matchweek 4 · Friday 28 August 2026, 20:00 CEST (18:00 UTC) · Euroborg, Groningen

Evidence to Sunday 23 August. Neither club has published a starting eleven or a matchday squad, so no line-up is predicted below. Anything either club has said since Sunday has not been checked here, and that limit is the reason several judgements below are held deliberately loose. Team news will be reviewed closer to kickoff, and material changes reflected on this page.

Both sides arrive from a match that told almost nobody anything

FC Groningen lost 5-1 away at the reigning champions. Fortuna Sittard lost 2-0 at home having played eighty-five minutes with ten men, after Ole Romeny was sent off in the fifth minute at 0-0.

Neither result is worth much as evidence, and it is worth being precise about why, because they are empty in different ways. Groningen's figures were produced against PSV away — an opponent who took nineteen shots from inside the penalty area — and the opponent explains almost every number in the match. Fortuna's were produced a man short from the fifth minute; twenty-eight per cent of the ball, four shots and 0.28 expected goals describe a numerical disadvantage, not a football team.

So this preview is built mostly on the four matches before those two. That is a smaller evidence base than a fourth-round fixture normally offers, and it is stated rather than disguised.

The table says Groningen will have the ball. Both clubs have already shown that this settles nothing

Groningen have held 59, 45 and 38 per cent of the ball. Fortuna have held 24, 36 and 28. On that alone the possession split on Friday is close to the safest call in the fixture.

It is also close to the least useful. Fortuna took twenty-four per cent of the ball away at PSV and drew 2-2. They took thirty-six per cent at home to SC Cambuur and won 3-1 — a match in which they were outshot 17-19 and out-created four clear chances to one. A side that has drawn at the champions and beaten a promoted team while conceding territory in both is not a side whose result you can read off a possession count.

That is the trap in this fixture, and it is worth naming before anything else, because almost every easy line about Friday runs straight into it.

What Groningen actually repeat is where they shoot from

Strip out possession and one Groningen behaviour survives across three very different afternoons.

At ADO Den Haag they took fourteen of seventeen shots from inside the penalty area, created eight big chances, and turned 2.21 expected goals into 4.02 on target. Away at PSV, chasing from the eleventh minute with thirty-eight per cent of the ball, they took seven shots — all seven from inside the box — and still created four big chances from 0.94 expected goals.

Two opponents of completely different standing, two opposite game states, and the same habit. It is the most repeated attacking quantity of their season, and it is a chance-quality reading rather than a territorial one. That distinction is the whole of the argument below.

Two things it is not. It is not finishing quality: they missed six of eight big chances at ADO and three of four at PSV. And it is not yet a settled trait of this team — it is a behaviour observed twice where the location was recorded, which is a reason to expect it again and not a reason to treat it as proven.

Fortuna have one department they cannot change, and it is that one

Justin Hubner and Syb van Ottele are the only two recognised centre-backs to have played a competitive minute for Fortuna this season. They have played every one of those minutes together.

Behind them the cover is thin in a specific, checkable way rather than a vague one. Rodrigo Guth arrived on loan from CA Talleres on 19 August; the head coach is reported as saying he is eligible but not ready for a starting place, and would be used only if required. He last played a competitive match in May and made six appearances during his season in Argentina — he came on for his first minutes for the club on 75 minutes against AZ. Iván Márquez, the third recognised option, is reported as returning to group training only during the international break, with match readiness after that.

Fortuna conceded 63 goals last season, the third-highest total in the division. That is a season-level figure and it is used as one: it makes this department worth attacking, and it says nothing about this particular pairing, which has been properly tested once. Against Cambuur it conceded a single goal — but Cambuur created four clear chances and missed three of them. Whether the pairing survives an opponent that converts, rather than one that missed three of four, has not been established.

So the case for the home side is narrow and specific. It is not that Fortuna defend the box badly. It is that Groningen aim their attempts at the one area of the Fortuna team that cannot be rotated, refreshed or changed at half-time.

Fortuna score first — and one of the two players who has done it is suspended

In both matches Fortuna finished with eleven men, they scored the opening goal. Romeny on 42 minutes at PSV; Philip Brittijn on six and Lequincio Zeefuik on fifteen against Cambuur. Both times it turned a match they were not controlling into one they did not need to control.

Romeny is unavailable. He was dismissed on five minutes against AZ — a straight red card, not a second yellow, in a match where Fortuna picked up no caution at all. No reason for the dismissal has been published anywhere, and no suspension length has been published either. He misses this match because a ban of any length starts at a club's next fixture and this is it; whether it runs any longer than that is genuinely unknown.

What replaces him is the part worth watching. Fortuna's attacking rebuild is entirely on loan, and the arithmetic is unflattering: out went Kaj Sierhuis with 12 goals as last season's top scorer, Dimitrios Limnios with 2 goals and 8 assists, and Lance Duijvestijn with 3 and 2. In came Zeefuik, Anthony Descotte and Romeny — a net loss of 17 goals and 10 assists of proven output, and one of the three arrivals is the player now suspended.

Zeefuik is the one with the strongest evidence behind him. In Fortuna's only match carrying player-level underlying numbers he produced 38 per cent of the team's expected goals and 49 per cent of its post-shot expected goals, and scored. One match is one match, and the PSV fixture carries no player-level breakdown at all, so that is a single strong performance rather than a rate. He is on loan from AZ, not from Groningen, so nothing prevents him playing here.

Groningen have had a different centre-back pairing in every match — and the last one was a choice

Thijmen Blokzijl, twenty-one years old and now wearing the armband, has had three partners in three matches: Marco Rente, then Elvis van der Laan, then Márk Csinger.

The third one matters more than the first two, and in a way that cuts both directions. Csinger started at PSV with Rente and Van der Laan both fit and on the bench. The earlier pairings were improvised around absences; this one was picked from three available players. That means the coach has a preference — and it also means almost nothing has been tested, because the pairing's entire competitive history together is about half an hour away at the champions, in a match nothing can reasonably be concluded from.

The department behind them is genuinely bare. Malcolm Jeng, the loan signing brought in as cover there, ruptured his second Achilles tendon in mid-August with recovery stated at roughly a year. Dick Lukkien has publicly called the personnel situation in that position critical. And the club's best-evidenced quality — a defence that conceded 45 goals in 34 matches last season, the fourth-best record in the division — sits directly on top of the one area of the team that has not been the same twice.

Nothing here says any of the three defenders is a weakness. It says the opposite of a settled situation, which is a different claim and a smaller one.

Team news

FC Groningen. Malcolm Jeng is out long-term with a second Achilles rupture; recovery is stated at about a year. Ryan Metu is out on the coach's own dated account. Marco Rente's situation is unresolved in both directions: withdrawn after half an hour in the opening match, left out of the squad for the second, then on at half-time and off again on 54 minutes at PSV — with the match statistics recording one Groningen injury and naming nobody, and the event feed carrying no injury at all. Eight minutes is as consistent with a knock as with a change at 1-5, so nothing is claimed either way.

Oskar Zawada is the other open question. He wears the number nine, he is the senior centre-forward in the squad, and he has now been an unused substitute twice — the second time with his side four goals down. No cause has been published at any stage. Being named on a bench shows he can be selected; being left on it twice shows nothing about why.

Brynjólfur Willumsson has led the line alone in all three matches and scored in each of them, which is both why he matters and why his record carries an asterisk: every one of those goals came with the senior centre-forward not on the pitch.

Fortuna Sittard. Romeny is suspended, as above. Márquez is not a realistic option before the international break. Guth is available but, on his own coach's reported account, not ready to start.

Mohamed Ihattaren is the largest selection question of the two teams. He is the squad's principal creator — he started against Cambuur, assisted the opening goal and played four key passes, more than any other Fortuna player in that match — and he was then left out of the starting eleven against AZ and introduced on 66 minutes. No cause has been established by anybody, in either direction, and his minutes in that match tell us nothing, because by then it had stopped being a test of anything.

One more thing is unresolved, and it is bigger than a name. Nobody can say what shape Fortuna play. The identical Matchweek 3 eleven was rendered two incompatible ways — a back three on one grid, a back four on another — and the match before that produced four disagreeing readings of one team. Both readings are carried here and neither is adopted. It is the single piece of information that would change most of this preview.

How this could go

Groningen get into the box, repeatedly. They have the ball for long spells and put their attempts where they have put them all season. The contest becomes Mattijs Branderhorst's workload and how many clear openings Fortuna give up, rather than anything territorial. What would tell you it is not happening is not the possession figure and not the shot count — it is the share of Groningen's attempts coming from inside the area dropping well below the four-fifths they managed at ADO, or their big-chance count finishing at one or fewer.

Fortuna score first, as they have in both matches they finished with eleven men. Set the bar honestly: before half-time, because that is where both their opening goals came — one on 42 minutes, one on six. If it happens, Groningen have to chase, which is the game state their own best quality is least suited to; a defensive record is worth most against a side that has to break you down. It falls away if Groningen score first, or if the interval arrives level.

A fourth pairing. Rente returns, or Van der Laan does, or some other combination lines up beside Blokzijl, and an untested partnership meets the one opponent behaviour that has actually repeated. Who this favours is the honest blank in the whole preview — nobody knows whether an unfamiliar pairing is worse, and Csinger was chosen ahead of two fit players by a coach who watches them every day. It stops being a live question if Blokzijl and Csinger start together, which would be Groningen's first repeated centre-back pairing of the season.

What we expect

FC Groningen are the more likely winners, and that is offered as a lean rather than an expectation. The supporting case is a real one: they aim their attempts at the one Fortuna department that cannot be changed, they are at home, they have six points to four, and the visitors are without the player who scored their opening goal of the season.

The case against is not softened. Groningen's biggest attacking performance came against a side that had not scored in the division. Their centre-back partnership has been different every week and nobody knows what Friday's will be. Fortuna have never needed the ball and have four points from the two matches they finished with a full team. And this preview stops at Sunday, so two days of team news sit outside it.

Goals rather than a quiet evening looks the better side of that question. Groningen have scored in every match; Fortuna have scored in both they finished with eleven men; Groningen have conceded in all three, and Fortuna's season-long defensive record is the third-worst in the division. Both teams scoring is a live proposition rather than a hopeful one — and it is conditional, and the condition is that Fortuna assemble a functioning forward line without Romeny, which is exactly the thing this preview says has not been established.

There is no case for backing a margin here: a lean this narrow does not support one, and no scoreline is predicted. Nothing supports a first-half direction either — two opening goals on six and 42 minutes is not a pattern with a shape. Among plausible scorers, Brynjólfur Willumsson is the one name the evidence points at, on narrow grounds: he is the only Groningen player who has started every match in the same role and scored in each. No set-piece or penalty duty is established for him, and no Fortuna scorer direction is offered at all, because their forward line is being rebuilt this week and it would be a guess.

FairEleven does not use betting-market data in its analysis, and none was gathered here.

The main risk to this view

The mechanism above can be entirely right and still not decide the match.

If Fortuna score first, the box-entry argument becomes much less relevant — Groningen would be chasing, and the quality this team is best evidenced for is a defensive one that matters least in exactly that state. Fortuna have already done this twice, and they have done it while conceding the ball and the territory in both matches. There is no version of Friday where Groningen dominating the ball is a reassuring sign on its own.

That is the specific risk, and it is checkable within ninety minutes rather than a general warning about football being unpredictable.

What to watch

Who partners Thijmen Blokzijl — and whether it is Márk Csinger for a second time. The share of Groningen's shots taken from inside the penalty area, which is the number this preview should be judged on. Their big-chance count, which separates the argument working from Groningen merely having the ball. Whether Fortuna score before half-time, and who takes it. Whether Oskar Zawada plays at all. Whether Mohamed Ihattaren starts. And how many central defenders Fortuna field, which is the one observation that would settle a question two team-sheet renderings have answered in contradictory ways.