Millwall host West Ham United at 12:30 UK on Saturday 19 September, the standout London derby of the Championship round and comfortably the biggest fixture on the card. The Den has a lunchtime kick-off, a full house and two teams that have spent the opening weeks of the season refusing to play a quiet game of football.
West Ham United arrive as the division's leading scorers. Millwall arrive having conceded in five of their last six. Both are joint top of the Championship for the number of their matches that have gone past two and a half goals.
West Ham United lead the Championship for goals scored at 2.86 a game and sit second for shots on target at 5.86. Their last six matches have produced twenty-seven goals between them: 6-0 against Wrexham, 4-2 against Wolves, 3-0 against Derby, a 3-2 win at Bolton, a 1-1 draw at Watford and a 3-2 cup defeat to Fulham. They are also the second-cleanest side in the division, committing just 8.57 fouls a game.
Millwall are a study in contradictions. They are fifth for goals scored at 1.86 a game but twentieth for goals conceded at exactly the same number, and yet they rank third for clean sheets - a team that either shuts you out or gets into a shoot-out. The recent record is 2-2 at Middlesbrough, 3-1 down at Blackburn, 5-1 beaten at Southampton, 3-0 beaten at home by Wrexham and a 4-0 of their own against Bolton.
Both clubs top the division's over 2.5 goals table on 86 per cent - six of seven matches each. No other Championship side is above them. Team sheets are not confirmed.
The model makes over 2.5 goals 62.5 per cent at 5/8 and both teams to score 64 per cent at 4/7. Its projections have West Ham at 1.86 goals and Millwall at 1.37, a combined 3.23 for the afternoon, which is the higher end of what it produces for a Championship fixture.
The supporting number is the one above: ten of the twelve matches these two clubs have played this season have finished with three goals or more. That is not a small sample stretched to fit - it is both teams' entire season so far, and it points the same way for each of them independently.
The case against is the occasion. Lunchtime London derbies at The Den are not usually played at a track meet's tempo, and Millwall's third-place clean-sheet ranking says they are capable of strangling a game when they choose to. That is the risk in the price.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
The referee is Paul Tierney, averaging 22 fouls and 2 yellow cards a game across his two matches this season. That is a busy whistle for a fixture with this much history, and it meets two teams that foul at opposite rates - Millwall tenth in the division at 11.14 a game, West Ham twenty-third at 8.57.
The longest streak in the match belongs to Jarrod Bowen, who has had two or more shots in seven straight games and at least one on target in six of them. In the home ranks, Jenson Metcalfe has committed at least one foul in seven consecutive matches and Zak Sturge in six. Taty Castellanos has fouled in six straight for the visitors, and Konstantinos Mavropanos has had two or more shots in four in a row from centre-back, which is the sort of line the prop market is usually slow to catch up with.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
West Ham United are the better side and the goals column says so emphatically, but Millwall at home in a lunchtime derby is the wrong place to expect a comfortable afternoon for anyone.
The read is a West Ham win in a match with goals in it, with the goals the more confident half of that sentence. Both clubs have seen six of their seven matches clear two and a half, and nothing about a full Den at half past twelve suggests either defence is about to discover restraint.
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