Elfsborg ranked fourth last season in the Swedish Allsvenskan and they won the Swedish Cup, so they participate this season in Europa League. Before the summer break of Swedish Allsvenskan they were on some good form and at the moment they are ranked second in the league standings, five points behind Gothenburg. They have just two defeats in the first 13 games with Magnus Haglund as their head coach, while with this coach they won the title in Sweden eight years ago. Their main strength is the attack, the best in the league till now, as they failed to score only twice in thirteen games.
Elfsborg is clearly more experienced in European games than Lahti. From the 2007-2008 season they always participate in European competitions, while their greatest success was the entrance to the groups of Europa League two years ago. They recorded some big wins in the past Europa league seasons, a qualification over the Portuguese Braga in 2009, and some victories against Lazio in 2009 and Standard Liege in 2013.
This is just the second participation for Lahti in the Europa League and with their poor condition in their domestic league, I do not think that they can manage to bring problems to Elfsborg. Elfsborg is the best functioning offensive team of Sweden at the moment and they aim to win in Finland, just to ‘clean’ the qualification to the next round of Europa League early and then focus exclusively on the Swedish league that restarts on Sunday.
Bet: Elfsborg Win @1.75
