Robyn Johannes of Golden Arrows
Golden Arrows will look to keep up their strong run of form when they host Ajax Cape Town in the Absa Premiership on Saturday. The match takes place at King Zwelithini Stadium, kick-off at 18h00.
Arrows have strung together their best run of results this season in their past three league games, claiming two wins and a draw. Back-to-back victories over Jomo Cosmos and Moroka Swallows were followed by a creditable 2-2 draw away to Bidvest Wits in which the KwaZulu-Natal team came back from two goals down.
Abafana Bes’thende find themselves placed 12th on the log standings heading into this game, but they are just three points off Bidvest Wits, the team who round out the top half of the table. Ajax are just ahead of the Clever Boys in seventh place.
The Cape team defeated Bloemfontein Celtic 2-0 in their last league match to bring to an end a six-game winless streak in the Absa Premiership that had seen them drop out of the top eight. Yet it is still too early to say that Ajax have turned the corner, especially as their away form this team has been pretty patchy: two wins and four losses from six matches.
That these teams have conceded a combined 40 goals this season suggests that the respective attacks should get plenty of opportunities to hit the back of the net. The coaches will hope this is not the case, but neutrals will hope this fixture keeps its record of having had just one goalless draw (2009/10) in over a decade.
Head-to-head stats between these two teams suggest that Saturday’s match will be a close one. In 22 league games between the teams since 2000/01, Ajax have claimed seven wins to Arrows’ six and each side has scored 24 goals against the other.
Three of the last four league meetings have ended in draws, though the Urban Warriors did break that sequence with a 3-1 win in Cape Town in the teams’ most recent match. At home, Arrows have won five and lost three from 11 league games against Ajax.