HJK will be looking to stroll into the Europa League when they welcome NK Maribor to the Bolt Arena in the second leg and final hurdle of the Europa League qualifying stage this Thursday evening.
It was a comfortable win for HJK in the first leg of action in the Europa League as they managed to defeat Maribor 2-0 in a game where the Slovenian side showed very little promise.
In fact, with 61% of the ball for the away side that day along with five shots on target and two goals, HJK ended up leaving the Ljudski Vrt with an easy 2-0 win and a lot of hope in easing into the group stages of the Europa League.
David Browne scored the opening goal of the day for HJK when he scored just minutes into the second half. Bojan Radulovic added a second after 64 minutes in the game, as HJK left with a 2-0 aggregate lead, a lot of confidence, and now most of the work done.
They are, however, still not that far past the damning 7-1 aggregate defeat to Viktoria Plzen in the Champions League qualifiers.
Plzen beat them 2-1 on home soil in the first leg of that game, before a 5-0 thrashing away from home for HJK in that two-legged affair. In truth, they were never really in that two-legged tie, and qualification into the Champions League was nothing more than a dream for them.
Their form in the league, however, has been something to shout about quite loudly. As of now, the Veikkasuliiga sees them sit second in the table, level on points with first-placed KuPS, but with them having played a game more, the club are sitting second with the chances being quite high of a three-point gap getting created.
Nevertheless, with a record of 11 wins from 18 games, four draws and three losses, HJK remain in solid form across this league season so far with a fantastic record of 26 goals scored and 16 goals conceded.
On the other hand, with a 1-1 draw with Oulu last time out, they are coming into this one outside of the win column.
As for Maribor, they are coming into this game bottom of the 1. SNL following on from one victory and three losses already in the league season.
Combine this with the fact they've conceded nine goals and let in just four, and they remain well out of form after the 2-0 loss in the first leg here.
Forebet predicts a win for HJK here and for the game to see under 2.5 goals.