KA haven't lost to ÍBV since 2023, and they won the reverse fixture 2-0 in Akureyri back in May. Yet they travel to the Vestmannaeyjar — the Westman Islands, off Iceland's south coast — on one of the worst runs the league has seen all summer: six straight defeats, and close to twenty goals conceded in the last five. The head-to-head says one thing, the form says another. And at Hásteinsvöllur, where ÍBV have been scoring for fun lately, those two stories collide.
The market
Both teams to score: Not posted
With more than two weeks to kickoff, there's no stable line yet, and both sides play at least one league match in between. What we can say: home form leans toward ÍBV, but the head-to-head pulls the other way, so any opening price is unlikely to be one-sided.
ÍBV started the summer badly and have since pulled themselves round — unbeaten in five, three wins and two draws, with the goals flowing: six against Keflavík at home, a 2-1 over Stjarnan, and a 4-1 up in Akureyri against Þór. The caveat is that their goal difference for the season is still negative. ÍBV have shipped 26 in twelve games and kept a clean sheet in exactly none of the last five. This is a side that scores plenty and concedes plenty.
KA are in free fall. Six defeats in a row, most recently a 2-3 loss at Víkingur where they led 2-1 before it all came apart, the hosts finishing the job with a stoppage-time penalty. Hallgrímur Mar Steingrímsson scored both KA goals that night and has stayed sharp even as the team around him falls to pieces. Hallgrímur Jónasson, who took the job on a three-year deal and set a top-half target, now finds himself with a squad the press has openly questioned for how it was built — the expensive returnees Danijel Djuric and Oliver Heiðarsson haven't delivered. KA sit only about three points off the relegation places; ÍBV have more room.
Last 6 matches
The key question is in KA's box. Steinþór Már Auðunsson and the back line in front of him have been leaking goals in bunches — roughly three and a half a game across the last five — and now they meet a home attack that thrives when it can move quickly. Róbert Elís Hlynsson is ÍBV's top scorer and Bjarki Björn Gunnarsson their leading creator, with goals and assists on his record. Let those two get into the spaces KA have left open week after week, and the visitors will struggle to keep this one under control.
But there's a catch. KA have had few problems scoring — two, three, three in recent defeats — so this isn't about the visitors being toothless. It's that they can't hold a game together for ninety minutes. If KA go ahead early, as they did at Víkingur, it tests the nerve of an ÍBV side that has shown its own defensive lapses. Whoever controls the tempo after the first goal decides most of this.
Head-to-head
The pick
Both teams to score: Yes
The lines aren't up yet, so this is a read on the match itself rather than the market. ÍBV are in a completely different frame of mind from the visitors, they're scoring at home, and they face a defence that hasn't held anything together for six weeks. When two sides that both score and both concede meet, and one is in lively home form while the other is on a six-game slide, the balance tips toward a home win in a game with goals at both ends.
The risk lives in the head-to-head and in the mind. KA have won the last three against ÍBV and know exactly how to see them off. If the visitors get in front early, the old pattern could take over and ÍBV's confidence — new and brittle — might give way. And the wind at Hásteinsvöllur, an exposed, gusty ground, is an unknown that can turn a match on its head; worth checking the forecast before kickoff.
This is also a meeting of the two clubs farthest from the capital, and among only four teams from outside Reykjavík ever to be crowned Icelandic champions. KA travel the length of the country, from Akureyri in the far north out to an island reachable only by ferry or flight — both at the mercy of the weather. A tiring trip on top of a wretched run, and no gift to land in the islands with the wind up.