FC Groningen v PEC Zwolle

Eredivisie Matchweek 7 · Friday 18 September 2026, 20:00 CEST (18:00 UTC) · Euroborg, Groningen

Evidence measured to Wednesday 16 September; both clubs have played six. Neither team sheet is confirmed, so no line-up is predicted below.

The FairEleven view

The balance points to Groningen, with moderate confidence — and what holds it there rather than higher is the venue, not the opponent.

PEC Zwolle are sixteenth with four points. Three home matches, three defeats, one goal scored there and twelve conceded — the worst home record in the Eredivisie, and the first thing anyone reaches for. It is also the half of their season that stays in Zwolle. All four of their points have come on the road, where they have scored five and conceded five.

Groningen are ninth, and they do not have a home record either — one win, one draw and one defeat at the Euroborg, and exactly the same pattern away.

So the two halves meeting on Friday are level on points and nearly level on goals. What separates them sits underneath — as does the limit on it: both sides arrive from the worst attacking performance either has produced all season.

Why

Expected goals measures the quality of the chances a side creates, so 1.50 is a set of chances a typical team would score from about one and a half times. PEC's split is real in attack — penalties stripped out, they have created 0.43 expected goals a match at home and 1.26 away — and in defence it stops making sense. Non-penalty chance quality conceded: 6.15 across three home matches, from which they conceded twelve goals; 7.03 across three away matches, from which they conceded five. Nothing available explains it, and nobody has described how this side defends — there is no pressing description, no build-up description and no set-piece description for them anywhere — so a concession count is not turned into a mechanism here.

There is a caveat: PEC hosted Ajax, N.E.C. and Feyenoord — fourth, tenth and third — and visited the fifth, eleventh and twelfth. Three matches a side cannot separate a property of a team from a fixture list. The totals are less ambiguous: Groningen have created 8.83 expected goals to PEC's 6.64 — 5.06 without penalties — and allowed 12.32 to PEC's 14.76.

The matchup is sharper than the table. Groningen's repeated attacking signature is attempts from inside the penalty area that do not reach the goalkeeper — twenty-one shots against FC Twente, thirteen in the box, four on target. What that is doing to their output is unresolved: twice it produced far less than the chances behind it — recorded as more than a one-off — and the third time it went the other way, in a near-chanceless match. PEC's one evidenced defensive reading is that same match from the other end: a high volume of attempts conceded, yielding one or two clear chances a game. That is the kind of afternoon Groningen's twelve goals from 8.83 expected have mostly come in — not a finishing quality, since nothing separates shot selection, pressure and striking.

The thread running the other way is personnel, on both sides. Groningen's best-evidenced quality is their defending, yet three of their centre-backs now carry open absence records: Malcolm Jeng, signed as cover there, out until May 2027 with a ruptured Achilles tendon; Tyrique Mercera since 14 August; Nikolas Brandis since 11 September. Their own profile recorded no evidenced third option before two of those existed, and the coach has called the position critical. The opponent is the one least equipped to test it, at 0.84 non-penalty expected goals a match. PEC's losses are more central still: club captain Ryan Thomas and the defender Sherel Floranus, records opened on 11 and 7 September, no cause or return date for either, both absent for the 0-7. Filip Krastev, signed on deadline day, is unavailable on every reading of the evidence.

Last, the thing that bounds all of it. Groningen created 0.27 expected goals at Go Ahead Eagles on 12 September — a third of their next-lowest reading in a season otherwise spent between 0.94 and 2.21 — and drew 1-1, having led late. PEC created 0.29 at home to Feyenoord and lost 0-7. Neither side has a recent attacking performance to project from, and nobody has explained either collapse.

What would change this view

Groningen's attempt volume returning. Twenty or more shots, most from inside the box, is the shape their goal return has most often exceeded; it vanished four days after it last appeared.

PEC scoring first. They led once in the league, at FC Twente, and lost 3-1 — and Groningen have not turned a lead into a victory since Matchweek 3 either.

A fourth Groningen absence in central defence. The pairing has changed in every observed match; Thijmen Blokzijl, 21, is the only constant.

Ryan Thomas or Oskar Zawada being named. Thomas is half of the midfield pair in the only positionally rendered eleven we hold for his club. Zawada is on no absence record at all and has played no part in any arrangement anyone has observed — which is why no shape is stated for either side below.

Market Lens

Do seven places and four points overstate the distance here? On the underlying numbers the gap is real but smaller than the table implies. Groningen create 1.47 expected goals a match and allow 2.05; PEC create 1.11 — 0.84 without penalties — and allow 2.46. A third of a goal a match in creation, four-tenths in concession: real, repeated, and not seven places wide.

Half of PEC's deficit is one afternoon — seven of their seventeen goals conceded, and 3.52 of the 14.76 chance quality they have allowed. And that is where the argument should stop, because the same operation flatters everybody: Groningen's 1-5 at PSV sits in their column, and removing both barely moves the distance. A side's heaviest defeat is not an outlier because it is inconvenient. What the table does misstate is which half of PEC arrives — though even the better half allowed 7.03 chance quality while creating 3.78, worse than Groningen's home matches, where the two are close to level.

No market data was used in this analysis, and none was gathered. No score is predicted, and no probability is attached to anything above.

The supporting evidence

Availability, and what is actually known. Only two of the twelve open absence records here carry both a named injury and a published end date. Five carry no stated cause and no return date at all, and where a club called a player unavailable without saying why, the data provider has since categorised what the club would not — both versions are reported rather than merged. Krastev is the sharpest case: his club named no body part, the provider records Achilles tendon problems to 1 November, that category is not a rupture and no diagnosis is asserted here. Three further records are open and none is reported as a current absence. One detail belongs to this fixture and no other: Thijs Oosting is PEC's clearest source of confirmed attacking output, and Groningen sold him to them.

What is not being claimed. No eleven is projected and no confirmation has been published. Three separate strands say both teams line up 4-2-3-1, and no shape is stated for either: a label is not a behaviour, and neither side's arrangement has been seen with its full squad available. Marco Rente, named unavailable on 4 September, carries no open record now: that is a change in the record and not a statement that he is fit. Nobody at either club is treated as unavailable merely for being missing from a team sheet.

Watch whether Groningen get back into the box in numbers, and watch which half of PEC Zwolle gets off the bus.