Friday night at Portman Road, 8:00pm UK, and a fixture that looks very different from either end. Ipswich Town are back in the Premier League after finishing last season in the Championship, and they have already beaten Sunderland here. Liverpool arrive as the round's Friday-night headliners with a stranger record: two league games, two 2-2 draws, and no win in their last five matches in any competition, a run stretching back to May.
The numbers below come from the live Statz match centre, which keeps re-running the model through to kickoff. Two league games is a small sample and everything that follows should be read with that in mind, but the early pattern around both of these teams points the same way: goals.
These are expected line-ups rather than confirmed team sheets, so treat them as the model's best read of who starts.
Ipswich are expected to set up 4-2-3-1, with Kjell Scherpen in goal behind a back four of Dara O'Shea, Issa Diop, Jacob Greaves and Leif Davis. Marcelino Núñez and Saša Lukić hold in midfield, Issahaku Fatawu, Julio Enciso and Daizen Maeda supply the attacking line, and Sindre Walle Egeli leads the line.
Liverpool mirror the shape. Alisson starts in goal, with Virgil van Dijk expected to partner Jérémy Jacquet in the middle and Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong either side. Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister sit in front of them, with VÃctor Muñoz, Florian Wirtz and Cody Gakpo behind Alexander Isak.
Ipswich Town expected XI (4-2-3-1): Scherpen; O'Shea, Diop, Greaves, Davis; Núñez, Lukić; Fatawu, Enciso, Maeda; Walle Egeli.
Liverpool expected XI (4-2-3-1): Alisson; Kerkez, van Dijk, Jacquet, Frimpong; Szoboszlai, Mac Allister; Muñoz, Wirtz, Gakpo; Isak.
Ipswich's last five reads won three, drew one, lost one. The most recent outing was a 5-2 defeat at Manchester United in the league, but before that they beat Leicester 3-1 in the Carabao Cup and Sunderland 2-1 at Portman Road, and they closed their promotion season with a 3-0 win over QPR and a 2-2 draw at Southampton. Newest first, the sequence is L-W-W-W-D.
Liverpool's last five is a run of draws: 2-2 with Nottingham Forest, 2-2 at Newcastle, 1-1 with Brentford, a 4-2 defeat at Aston Villa and 1-1 with Chelsea. Newest first, that is D-D-D-L-D - no wins, and ten goals conceded across the five.
The early league numbers frame it neatly. Both teams to score has landed in 100% of each side's league games so far, and so has over 2.5 goals - for both clubs, that is rank 1 of 20 in the division. Ipswich are conceding three goals per league game, which ranks 19th of 20, while still scoring two per game themselves.
Alexander Isak has hit at least one shot on target in every one of his last five appearances - seven in total across the run, an average of 1.4 per game. Behind him, Dominik Szoboszlai has taken two or more shots in five straight games, 15 attempts in all at three per game, and Florian Wirtz has managed two-plus in each of his last five as well, 12 shots at 2.4 a game.
At the other end, Jacob Greaves has made at least one tackle in all five of his last five, 11 in total, and he is going to be busy against this front four.
One more thread worth pulling: discipline. Liverpool are averaging 3.5 cards per league game, rank 1 of 20, and 14 fouls per game, rank 3. Referee Darren England has taken charge of one league game so far this season and showed three yellow cards among 19 fouls, so the sample on him is thin - but Liverpool's own numbers are doing most of the work here.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
The angle the model likes most sits in Ipswich's defence. It rates Jacob Greaves to commit 1+ foul as the fourth-likeliest outcome on its board for this fixture, while the market prices him 23rd - he was 1.73 at the time of writing, with 2+ fouls at 4.33. Issa Diop carries a similar gap on 1+ foul at 1.62, and Dara O'Shea to have 1+ shot was 2.00 at the time of writing, with the model ranking him eighth-likeliest against a market price ranked 18th. Promoted centre-backs defending their box all night is exactly where foul counts climb.
The game-level case is simpler. The model projects 2.17 goals for Liverpool and 1.26 for Ipswich - 3.43 combined - and every league game either side has played this season has produced both teams scoring and over 2.5 goals. Two games is two games, but Liverpool's five-match run of 2-2s and 1-1s says the defensive end of their game has not settled yet, and Ipswich have scored in both league outings. The full projection table for the round is on the Statz projections page.
Liverpool should have far too much attacking quality for a promoted side, and the model makes them clear favourites on chances created. But a team that has drawn four of its last five and concedes at both ends of the pitch is not one to trust for a clean sheet at Portman Road, where Ipswich have already scored twice in a league game this season. Goals at both ends is the read, with the Greaves foul line the sharpest single price on the board at the time of writing.