Preview: Selangor v PFA Odin

Selangor's remarkable unbeaten season continues into the final circuit of the regular campaign, Edgar Baldasso's side hosting PFA Odin Sarawak on home soil having already secured top spot with two matches to spare.

Selangor's 6-3 win at JDT in Circuit 8 confirmed they cannot now be caught at the top of the table, though with the champions to be decided in the play-offs rather than the regular season standings, Baldasso's side have not yet won the league itself. Fourteen wins from fourteen matches, a goal difference approaching three figures, and two players, Marlon and Mohd Khairul, both among the division's leading scorers, tell their own story of a dominant campaign, and there is little reason to expect anything other than a fifteenth straight win here.

PFA Odin Sarawak, by contrast, arrive in Selangor with their own play-off hopes hanging by the thinnest of threads. Mohd Faizal Bin Zamri's side sit eighth on nine points after a difficult Circuit 8, beaten 9-3 by Terengganu before a 6-1 defeat at Pahang Rangers, De Souza scoring five in that game. PFA Odin can still, mathematically, finish inside the top six, but it would take an unlikely set of results elsewhere as well as victories in both their remaining fixtures, starting here and finishing next weekend against USM.

The two sides have already met once this season, Selangor winning 9-1 in Circuit 2, Marlon scoring twice inside the opening quarter of an hour. PFA Odin's best hope of a different outcome this time will rest on limiting the influence of Marlon and Evandro Borges, both of whom have been among Selangor's standout performers throughout the campaign, with Syahir Iqbal another to have picked up regular player of the match honours.

For Selangor, there remains a sense of a job still to finish. Top spot in the regular season is one thing, but the play-offs, where the top two go straight through to the semi-finals, will be the true test of the season's dominant form. A big win here, extending the unbeaten record to fifteen matches, would be the ideal send-off from the regular season before attention turns fully to the knockout stages, with the visit of KL City to come on the final day.

Just as significant as the result itself will be the manner of it. Selangor's home crowd have grown used to seeing the champions elect run up big scores this season, and with silverware still to be settled in the play-offs, there is every incentive for Baldasso's side to keep pushing right to the final whistle rather than easing off with the regular season title already, in effect, out of reach for the chasing pack.

Elsewhere in Selangor on the opening day of Circuit 9, Terengganu host JDT in a match with real bearing on the race for second, ATM face USM in a straight fight for sixth place, and Pahang Rangers play their final match of the regular season away at bottom club Wipers.