Borussia Monchengladbach take on Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga on Tuesday, with the hosts able to gain ground on their Champions League qualification rivals Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen given that they meet each other later on in the same evening.
Bremen, meanwhile, earned a hugely significant late win against Augsburg on Saturday to move six points clear of the bottom three in the table.
Match preview
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Gladbach twice held the lead at Stuttgart on Saturday, but were twice pegged back with the game ending 2-2 after Silas Wamangituka's 96h-minute penalty crushed Marco Rose's side.
Those dropped two points mean that Gladbach cannot move into the top four even by beating Bremen, but a winning run for them has to start somewhere having failed to win more than two games on the bounce all season.
Indeed, Rose's side have drawn more games than they have won this season, although that is not particularly unusual in this increasingly draw-heavy Bundesliga campaign.
It is clear which end of the pitch needs fixing, though, with the goals continuing to flow both for and against Rose's side. Lars Stindl is in particularly superb form, with his penalty against Stuttgart taking his tally to five goals in his last five league games. The 32-year-old has surely earned a recall to Germany's next international squad alongside his club teammate Jonas Hofmann.
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Bremen left it late on their way to beating Augsburg 2-0 at the weekend, but Florian Kohfeldt is not in a position to be greedy about the manner in which his side's victories arrive.
Kohfeldt's side rarely looked like losing against Augsburg, who failed to muster a single shot on target throughout the 90 minutes, but with time running out it appeared as though Bremen were heading for their seventh draw of the season.
However, captain Theodor Gebre Selassie had other ideas, nicking in ahead of his marker at the far post and smashing his volley into the net to give his side a precious lead in the 84th minute. Felix Agu put the three points beyond doubt three minutes later after a superb assist by Romano Schmid.
Bremen are likely to require a cleaner performance if they are to avoid defeat against Gladbach, but equally may find chances easier to come by in transition, with the hosts likely to take the game to them in a way Augsburg understandably rarely do to any opponent.
Borussia Monchengladbach Bundesliga form: DDLWWD
Borussia Monchengladbach form (all competitions): DLWWWD
Werder Bremen Bundesliga form: LLWLDW
Werder Bremen form (all competitions): LWWLDW
Team News
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Monchengladbach remain without Marcus Thuram after he spat on an opponent prior to the winter break, which saw the forward receive a six-match suspension.
Valentino Lazaro and Rocco Reitz are both ruled out through injury, but otherwise Rose appears to have a clean bill of health to choose from after Alassane Plea returned from the bench at Stuttgart.
Rose may look to rotate a few players with a crucial home match against Dortmund taking place at Borussia Park just three days later.
Bremen, meanwhile, will be without top goalscorer Niclas Fullkrug, Ludwig Augustinsson, Christian Gross, Patrick Erras and Nick Woltemade for the trip to Monchengladbach.
Milot Rashica could earn a start after returning from the bench against Augsburg having recovered from a hamstring injury.
Borussia Monchengladbach possible starting lineup:
Sommer; Lainer, Ginter, Elvedi, Wendt; Kramer, Neuhaus; Plea, Stindl, Hofmann; Embolo
Werder Bremen possible starting lineup:
Pavlenka; Veljkovic, Toprak, Friedl; Gebre-Selassie, Eggestein, Mohwald, Mbom, Agu; Rashica, Sargent
We say: Borussia Monchengladbach 2-1 Werder Bremen
We can envisage a narrow victory for Gladbach, who need to gain ground on fourth-placed Dortmund ahead of their upcoming fixture against Edin Terzic's side.
Bremen are undoubtedly tougher to beat than last season, though, and will not be easy to break down.
Top betting tip
Brett Curtis
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 Borussia Monchengladbach win with a probability of 49.67%. A win for Werder Bremen had a probability of 27.01% and a draw had a probability of 23.3%.
The most likely scoreline for a Borussia Monchengladbach win was 2-1 with a probability of 9.56%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 1-0 (8.61%) and 2-0 (7.64%). The likeliest Werder Bremen win was 1-2 (6.74%), while for a drawn scoreline it was 1-1 (10.77%). The actual scoreline of 1-0 was predicted with an 8.6% likelihood. Our data analysis correctly predicted that Borussia Monchengladbach would win this match.
