Beşiktaş v Skënderbeu background

Beşiktaş JK have hit an unusual one-goal-a-game rhythm in European competition as they welcome resurgent KS Skënderbeu on UEFA Europa League matchday five.

• Beşiktaş will be through with a win, if Sporting Clube de Portugal fail to beat FC Lokomotiv Moskva.

• If Skënderbeu lose in Istanbul, they are out.

Previous meetings
• José Sosa scored the only goal as Beşiktaş beat Skënderbeu in Albania on matchday one. It was Skënderbeu's first encounter with Turkish opponents.

• Beşiktaş faced FK Dinamo Tirana in the 1986/87 European Champion Clubs' Cup first round, winning both legs without conceding.

• Clubs from Albania and Turkey have met in 13 UEFA games, with all 13 being won by the Turkish side, by an aggregate score of 34-3.

Form guide
• Beşiktaş come into the game on the back of three successive 1-1 draws in Group H. They have scored once in each of their last seven European fixtures (two 1-0 wins, 2-1 and 3-1 defeats and the three 1-1s mentioned above).

• Skënderbeu have lost their last three European away games (conceding 11 goals in the process) but won their first group stage contest on matchday four, 3-0 at home against Sporting.

• The competition's change of identity has played well with Beşiktaş: they failed to make it through all three of their UEFA Cup group stage campaigns, but have been successful in all three of their UEFA Europa League ones.

• Skenderbëu are the first Albanian side to feature in the group stage of a major UEFA competition.

Trivia and links
• The journey from Korce to Istanbul is just shy of 700km.

• With 41 goals, Beşiktaş's Mario Gomez is the fourth highest-scoring German player of all time in UEFA club competition. He needs two more to match third-placed Ulf Kirsten.

• Skënderbeu are one of ten sides in the group stage who qualified for Europe this season as domestic champions, along with Qarabağ FK (Azerbaijan), APOEL FC (Cyprus), FC Viktoria Plzeň (Czech Republic), FC Midtjylland (Denmark), KKS Lech Poznań (Poland), FK Partizan (Serbia), Celtic FC (Scotland), Molde FK (Norway) and FC Basel 1893 (Switzerland).

The coaches
• Former Trabzonspor AŞ and Turkey goalkeeper Şenol Günes took charge at Beşiktaş in June this year. He famously coached Turkey to a bronze-medal finish at the 2002 FIFA World Cup. He has also won two Turkish Cups in the course of four spells as Trabzonspor coach.

• In situ at Skënderbeu since 2012, Mirel Josa was capped 27 times as a midfielder by Albania, spending the bulk of his career at KF Tirana before finishing up in Greece. He won a title as a coach with Tirana and has led his current side to glory in the last three Albanian league campaigns.