Baniyas won’t want a repeat of their last result here following the 3-1 Arabian Gulf League losing effort in their last game against Al-Wahda.
The only player to score from Baniyas was Taulant Seferi (53\'). Omar Kharbin (9\', 97\') was the scorer for Al-Wahda.
It’s not been often in recent games where Baniyas have managed to hold out for a full 90 minutes. In fact, Baniyas have seen their defence breached in 6 of their previous 6 clashes, leaking 9 goals on the way. It will be interesting to see if that trend will be sustained here.
In their previous game, Sharjah drew 3-3 in the Arabian Gulf League tie with Emirates.
For Sharjah, the goalscorers were Yu-min Cho (40\', 59\') and Moussa Marega (64\'). Andrés Iniesta (55\') scored for Emirates.
The stats don’t lie, and Sharjah have been scored against in 5 of their last 6 games, seeing opposing sides hit 9 goals overall. Defensively, Sharjah could really do with shoring things up.
Head to head
Looking over their past head to head meetings stretching back to 03/04/2021 shows that these fixtures have not been kind to Baniyas. They have not managed to get themselves any wins whatsoever while Sharjah have just been too good for them, beating them in 83% of those ties.
A total of 21 goals were shared by the two clubs in this period, with 1 of them for The Sky Blues and 20 netted by Al Malek. The average number of goals per game works out to 3.5.
The previous league clash featuring these clubs was Arabian Gulf League match day 6 on 28/10/2023 when it ended Sharjah 5-0 Baniyas.
Team News: Baniyas
There is just the lone fitness concern for the Baniyas boss Darko Milanič to contend with thanks to an almost full-strength squad. 10 (FC Baniyas) is out of contention.
Team News: Sharjah
Owing to an otherwise available group of players, there is only the one fitness problem for the Sharjah boss Cosmin Olăroiu to be concerned with. 5 (Sharjah FC) won’t be playing here.
Prediction
In this game, Sharjah will probably get a lot of shots on goal and make them count.
However, Baniyas may well find it hard to score, although we do think that it’s probable they’ll be hitting back at some stage here. We’re therefore expecting to see a 1-3 win for Sharjah at the end of this one.
