Breiðablik's recent scorelines read more like basketball than football: 4-4, 3-4, 6-3, 2-3, 3-3. They haven't kept a league clean sheet in five matches, and yet they sit fourth. That tells you how this side is collecting points right now — they outscore opponents rather than shutting them out. Into that open game come KA Akureyri, who have conceded four to Fram and five to KR in two of their last three. Two leaky defences meet in Kópavogur.
The market
Both teams to score: yes the likelier call
The table paints a clean picture. Breiðablik are fourth on seventeen points, still in touch with the European places, while KA are ninth on ten and looking down rather than up. But the form complicates what the table suggests. Breiðablik arrive off a 4-4 draw at Stjarnan in which they shipped four on the road, and before that a 3-4 loss to Fram. This is a side that wins shoot-outs, not one that controls games.
KA are in a worse spot. Three straight league defeats, and a defence that has been wide open — eleven goals conceded in their last four games by the available numbers. The bright spot is the return of Jóan Símun Edmundsson, who scored immediately against Fram and gives the attack the edge it had been missing. KA actually led Fram 2-1 before it all unravelled before half-time. That's the pattern at the moment: they create enough to stay in games, but they don't defend well enough to protect a lead. Against an attack that put six past KR at this very ground, that's a worry.
Recent form
The game turns on whether KA's defence can cope with Breiðablik's attacking weight at all. At home, Breiðablik build through Aron Bjarnason and Viktor Karl Einarsson, with Kristófer Ingi Kristinsson and Andri Rafn Yeoman up top — a front line that has scored in volume at Kópavogsvöllur. KA's task is simple to state and hard to do: close the gaps between defence and midfield that Fram and KR exploited without much trouble.
That's where the doubt sits. KA haven't kept a clean sheet in five league games and last time out their defence let in four. To stay in this one, Jóan Símun and company need to keep the ball on the right side of the pitch and punish Breiðablik at the other end — because if the game opens up, as every Breiðablik match has lately, it tilts quickly against the visitors. KA's attack can score. The question is whether it can score enough to keep pace with a side that concedes goals but scores more.
Head-to-head
The pick
Both teams to score: yes
The pick is a Breiðablik home win in a high-scoring game. Everything points to goals: neither side has kept a clean sheet in five matches, the head-to-heads have mostly been open, and Breiðablik average well over two goals at home. The quality gap and the venue do the rest — KA haven't put this team away in six attempts.
The risk comes in two forms. One: KA's revived attack, with Jóan Símun leading it, turns this into an even shoot-out decided in the closing minutes — and Breiðablik have shown they'll surrender a lead themselves. Two: if the game unexpectedly drops into a low-scoring rhythm and Breiðablik win 1-0, the over goes down even though the winner call holds. But given these two defences, that would run against everything both sides have shown all summer.
KA face a long trip south — close to four hundred kilometres from Akureyri in the north down to Kópavogur in the capital area — to meet a side they haven't been able to handle in two years. Kick-off is 18:00 Iceland time.