Seeking to get off to a perfect start, Emmen suffered a comprehensive 4-1 defeat against PSV Eindhoven in their season-opener at the Philips Stadion on Saturday.

Dick Lukkien's men were left with a mountain to climb in under one hour courtesy of Johan Bakayoko's opener, a Cody Gakpo double and Maikel Kieftenbeld's own goal after which Ole Romeny pulled one back.

As a result, last year's runaway Eerste Divisie champions currently sit bottom of the Eredivisie standings after the first round of matches.

Coming up next is the task of facing off against an opposing outfit with just two victories in the last 14 meetings between the teams all the way back to 2014.

Unbeaten in each of their last six and 10 of 11 home matches since the turn of the year, Saturday's hosts will back themselves to com away with a positive result in this one.

Waalwijk played out a thrilling 2-2 stalemate against FC Utrecht in their curtain-raiser at the Mandemakers Stadion on Saturday evening.

Having gone into the break with a 2-0 lead courtesy of strikes from Dario Van den Buijs and Iliass Bel Hassani, Joseph Oosting's men conceded a second-half brace to Bas Dost and had to settle for a point.

RKC are in eighth place in the league table and now set out to get their campaign up and running by securing all three points this weekend.

With their last seven matches on the road yielding just one victory, Saturday's visitors have it all to do as they aim to win at this weekend's venue for the first time since 2017.

Emmen Eredivisie form:

Emmen form (all competitions):

RKC Waalwijk Eredivisie form:

RKC Waalwijk form (all competitions):

Team News

Emmen's Lorenzo Burnet is ruled out of Saturday's contest with a foot injury, while Teun Bijleveld also misses out through a muscle problem.

Mart Lieder remains sidelined for the home side with a long-term knee injury and the Dutchman has been out of action since the end of February.

Lucas Bernadou made his return from action last time out but goalkeeper Kyan van Dorp is yet to fully recuperate from a meniscal injury.

New arrival Pelle Clement could be in line for his Waalwijk debut here having missed his side's share of the spoils against Utrecht.

Meanwhile, Florian Jozefzoon is still unavailable as he is yet to feature since representing Suriname against Mexico in the second week of June.

Emmen possible starting lineup:
Oelschlagel; Hardeveld, Veldmate, Araujo, Veendorp; Vlak, Kieftenbeld; Romeny, Bernadou, Mendes; Zivkovic

RKC Waalwijk possible starting lineup:
Vaessen; Van den Buijs, Adewoye, Gaari, Lelieveld, Lutonda; Oukili, Vroegh, Bel Hassani; Kramer, Daneels

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We say: Emmen 1-0 RKC Waalwijk

The teams come into this one on a horrid run of results and we are anticipating a nervy and cagey affair. That said, we are also tipping the home side to scrape a narrow victory at the end of the 90 minutes.

For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.

Top tip

Our expert tipster partners at Sporita.com are predicting over 2.5 goals in this match. Click here to find out what else they are predicting for this game and for more of their tried-and-tested football tips.