Both teams have not quite hit the heights of last season, and three points in this weekend's encounter could be the catalyst for a change in fortune going forward.
While we expect Heerenveen to put up a decent fight, we are backing NEC to narrowly edge out their visitors en route to all three points at the end of the 90 minutes.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a NEC win with a probability of 45.13%. A win for Heerenveen had a probability of 31.29% and a draw had a probability of 23.6%.
The most likely scoreline for a NEC win was 2-1 with a probability of 9.16%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 1-0 (7.77%) and 2-0 (6.62%). The likeliest Heerenveen win was 1-2 (7.44%), while for a drawn scoreline it was 1-1 (10.75%). The actual scoreline of 3-0 was predicted with a 3.8% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that NEC would win this match.