ELV Elversberg SV Elversberg - SGF Fürth SpVgg Greuther Fürth

Elversberg punished passive Fürth early and took a 2-0 lead into half-time thanks to a wonder goal from Sickinger. After the restart, Fürth comes out with a lot of pressure but fails to capitalise on their chances. Elversberg weathers the storm and regains control. Opportunities for Fellhauer and Damar underscore their dominance, but the hosts don't need to take many risks and their win was never in danger.

The home team is not taking any chances, maintaining possession to prevent Fürth from having any opportunity to make a comeback.

After the break, Fürth wanted to press high, but not much of that remains. In total, Elversberg are winning the ball back earlier, taking 12.8 seconds compared to Fürth's 16.4.

The initial euphoria of Fürth after the restart has somewhat fizzled out, now Elversberg are circulating the ball again and creating dangerous chances, as just seen with Fellhauer and Damar.

The ball is rolling again in Elversberg.

Two good goals have lit up an otherwise rather sluggish match. Elversberg took an early lead against a passive defence, and then sat back without taking too many risks going forward. Then, just as Fürth were showing some improvement, Sickinger extended the lead to 2-0 with a brilliant long-range effort.

Currently, there's little action going forward. Elversberg is allowing Fürth to control the play while maintaining a solid defensive structure.

Currently, the match is taking place in midfield, with tackles being made forcefully. Now Itter has brought down his opponent Fellhauer, but referee Schwengers manages without showing a yellow card.

Itter brings Petkov down on the touchline – resulting in the latter landing directly on the assistant referee Maibaum, who requires brief treatment. The match resumes shortly after.

There are large patches of bare earth visible on the pitch and, as a result, some ground passes are bouncing erratically. However, both teams are coping well with it so far.

The first meeting between these two earlier this season ended goalless, but today the deadlock has been broken very early.

The ball is rolling in Elversberg.

Compared to the 2-1 home victory against Regensburg, Fürth make one change: Felix Klaus is fit again, replacing Jannik Mause from the start.

Horst Steffen sends the same starting lineup into the match as last week, having no reason to change anything after the convincing 3-0 victory in Darmstadt.

Noll - Loosli, Quarshie, Itter - Meyerhöfer, Münz, Consbruch, John - Hrgota, Klaus - Srbeny

Kristof - Baum, Pinckert, Rohr, Neubauer - Fellhauer, Sickinger - Petkov, Damar, Zimmerschied - Asllani

"Elversberg focus on possession play. Our first task will be to disrupt the opponent's rhythm. After winning the ball, we need to create options to pose problems for Elversberg."

"They have found their structure. However, in their play, they repeatedly make adjustments and tweak different positionings so that's something we must pay attention to. We are prepared to defend well against them, but we also want to try to implement our attacking play against any formation."

The only player in the current Fürth squad who has already won a second division match against Elversberg is Felix Klaus. In August 2023, he was among the scorers in Fortuna Düsseldorf's 5-0 victory at the Ursapharm-Arena an der Kaiserlinde.

In that convincing victory nearly a year ago, Paul Stock scored Elversberg's first - and only - Bundesliga 2 hat-trick. Since then, though, Stock hasn't found the back of the net at all.

Elversberg have not lost any of their three competitive matches against Greuther Fürth to date. They have drawn twice (including a 0-0 result in this season's reverse fixture), and in March 2024, the hosts celebrated their highest away victory in Bundesliga 2 with a 4-1 win at the Sportpark Ronhof.

Welcome along and thanks for joining us for build-up and live coverage of this Matchday 22 fixture between Elversberg and Greuther Fürth.