Next Monday, 13th of October 2014, Iceland will entertain the “new” Holland team at the Laugardalsvöllur Stadium in Reykjavik for the third round of the Euro 2016 Qualifiers, on a match of vital importance for the visitors, who have already lost one match in this qualifying campaign so far.

After being defeated by the Czech Republic on their first qualifiers' match back in September, Holland experienced some unexpected difficulties to overcome a somewhat fragile Kazakhstan at Amsterdam last Friday. Guus Hiddink has not yet been able to pass all of his ideas to the team and the clockwork orange still seems to be a bit rusty so far. With two defeats in three matches and an unconvincing win over that fragile former Soviet Republic, Holland still have a long way to pave in order to return to the good moment they exhibited in some of their World Cup matches last Summer.

Last Friday, against Kazakhstan, Holland allowed the visitors to opened the score in the first-half and only managed to get the equalizer on the 62th minute thanks to a goal, probably from an offside position, by Huntelaar. Two minutes later, the referee showed the red card to Dzolchiev for a rough tackle on Afellay and that was probably the decisive moment of the match, since the visitors never found a way to reorganize their lines.

Guus Hiddink changed Van Gaal’s 3-5-2 approach to his usual 4-3-3 system but the gears of the once well oiled engine are still not in full motion. The experienced Dutch manager has an impressive set of players at his disposal but he will definitely need more time to “fix” what needs to be fixed.

As for Iceland, the islanders have been enjoying a very good start on their Euro 2016 Qualifying stage. After surprisingly smashing Turkey at home by 3-0 on the first round, Iceland grabbed another vital win at Latvia last Friday, as they defeated the Baltic state by another three goal margin. Iceland were in control for large periods of the match, but it probably was the fact of Rudnevs being sent off early on the second-half (when there was still a 0-0 draw at the scoreboard) that catapulted the visitors towards a convincing win.

Iceland will certainly offer the Dutch with plenty of difficulties on next Monday’s match and, although the visitors may be seen as favourites, they will need to create something very different from what they have been doing recently if they want to win the clash.

Iceland

Stats: W-3 L-1 D-1

Recent Form - WWWDL

Netherlands

Stats: W-2 L-3 D-0

Recent Form - WLLWL

Possible Line-ups

Iceland (4-4-2) - Halldorsson - Bjarnason - Sigurdsson - Arnason - Skulason - B. Bjarnason - Gunnarsson - G. Sigurdsson - Hallfredsson - Sigthorsson - Bödvarsson

Netherlands (4-3-3) - Cillessen - van der Wilde - de Vrij - Martins Indi - Blind - De Jong - Afellay - Sneijder - Lens - Robben - Van Persie

Prediction

Iceland 1 Netherlands 1