Augsburg vs Hoffenheim

Hoffenheim have not lost to Augsburg in the last five meetings, and Augsburg have not beaten them. That sounds one-sided until the venues are separated out. Both Hoffenheim wins in the sequence came at their own ground: 3-1 on 7 April 2024 and 3-0 on 29 November 2025, the latter this season's reverse fixture, already 3-0 by half time. The three matches that were not Hoffenheim wins are all draws, and two of them were played here — 1-1 on 11 November 2023 and 0-0 on 10 November 2024. The third, a 1-1 on 29 March 2025, was in Hoffenheim.

Read that way the record says something narrower than dominance. In Augsburg, these two have produced two goals between them across the two most recent visits, and neither side has won. Eleven goals across the five meetings is inflated almost entirely by the two games at the other ground. Anyone backing an away win here is betting against the specific pattern this fixture has established at this venue.

Augsburg finished last season twelfth on 43 points, with only 35 goals scored and a minus sixteen difference. The current campaign is a near-repeat with the defence a little worse: eleventh after 28 rounds on 32 points, nine wins, five draws, fourteen defeats, 34 scored and 51 conceded for minus seventeen. At home they have been solid enough — six wins, three draws and five defeats in fourteen — and away from home they have not, with three wins and nine defeats.

Their recent run is poor. A 2-0 home win over Köln on 27 February is the only victory in the last five: 1-2 at Leipzig on 7 March, 0-2 at Dortmund on 14 March, 2-5 at home to Stuttgart on 22 March, and 1-1 at Hamburg on 4 April. Ten goals conceded in those five matches.

Hoffenheim finished fifteenth last season on 32 points with 68 conceded, which makes this season's fifth place on 50 points after 28 rounds a substantial turnaround. The record reads fifteen wins, five draws, eight defeats, 55 scored and 41 conceded. The travelling numbers are the ones that matter today and they are good: seven wins, four draws and three defeats in fourteen away games, 26 goals scored. They have been slightly better on the road than at home, where they have lost five.

Form, though, has turned against them. One win in the last five — 4-2 at Heidenheim on 7 March — with a 0-1 home defeat to St. Pauli on 28 February, a 1-1 home draw with Wolfsburg on 14 March, a 5-0 defeat at Leipzig on 20 March and a 1-2 home loss to Mainz on 4 April. Two of those three defeats came at their own ground, which is at least consistent with an away record that has held up better.

The eighteen-point gap is the first and largest factor. Fifth against eleventh with six matches left including this one, and one side chasing a European place while the other sits closer to the middle than to either extreme.

The away split is the second and it is what makes the pick coherent. Hoffenheim have won half their road games this season and scored 26 in fourteen; Augsburg have conceded 24 in fourteen at home. A visiting side that travels this well is a legitimate favourite even at a ground where it has not won recently.

Third, form runs the other way. Hoffenheim have taken four points from the last fifteen available and lost three of five. Augsburg have lost three of five themselves, so neither arrives with momentum, but the favourite is the one whose recent record has slipped furthest from its season-long standard.

Fourth, the shape of the fixture at this ground. Two consecutive stalemates here, one of them goalless, against sides that were both mid-table at the time. Augsburg's home approach has produced nineteen goals in fourteen matches — low-scoring, tight games are their normal state, and low-scoring tight games are the ones favourites fail to win.

The published selection is a Hoffenheim win at 2.08 with medium confidence. The argument for it is the eighteen-point gap and an away record of seven wins in fourteen, against a home side that concedes regularly and scores rarely. Hoffenheim have also gone five meetings without losing to this opponent.

The argument against is more specific than the argument for, which is why medium is the honest label rather than anything stronger. Hoffenheim have won once in five and lost at home twice in that run. The price sits inside the 1.80 to 2.10 band, which has returned minus 7.6 per cent across the 384 priced picks in our settled record and is the weakest range we bet in. And the last two visits to this ground produced a 0-0 and a 1-1.

The thing that beats it is exactly that: the draw. Three of the last five meetings finished level, both of the recent ones here did, and Augsburg's home football is built on keeping games small. If Hoffenheim's recent scoring problems travel with them, a point apiece is the outcome this fixture keeps arriving at.