Fulham host Crystal Palace at Craven Cottage on Saturday, 3:00pm UK kickoff, and both arrive needing a response: each has lost its last two Premier League matches. The Statz model makes it a narrow home lean, projecting 1.38 goals for Fulham against 1.22 for Palace, with the hosts ahead on shots too at 13.00 to 10.34.
That is as tight as the Saturday afternoon slate gets, and the more interesting numbers in this one sit away from the result markets. All figures below come from the live Statz match centre.
Team sheets are not in yet, so these are the expected XIs from the Statz predicted lineups rather than confirmed selections.
Fulham are expected to line up in a 4-2-3-1: Bernd Leno in goal behind Timothy Castagne, Joachim Andersen, Calvin Bassey and Antonee Robinson; Sander Berge and Alex Iwobi as the double pivot; Oscar Bobb, Josh King and César Palacios behind Gonzalo GarcÃa up front.
Palace are expected to go with their familiar three at the back: Dean Henderson in goal, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Chris Richards and Jaydee Canvot across the defence, Tyrick Mitchell and Anan Khalaili in the wide roles either side of Adam Wharton and Daichi Kamada, and Yéremy Pino and Eddie Nketiah supporting Jørgen Strand Larsen.
Fulham's last five across all competitions read D-W-L-W-L: a 1-1 draw at Wolves and a 2-0 win over Newcastle to close last season, then a 2-3 home defeat to Chelsea, a 3-0 Carabao Cup win over AFC Wimbledon and a 1-0 loss at Sunderland since the new campaign began.
Palace's five read D-L-W-L-L: a 2-2 draw at Brentford, a 1-2 home defeat to Arsenal, a 1-0 Conference League win over Rayo Vallecano, then this season's 2-0 loss at Everton and a 1-4 home beating by Manchester City.
Two league games into the season, Palace are conceding three goals per game, which ranks 19th of 20 in the division, and winning just one corner per game, dead last. Fulham's early returns are middling rather than alarming: one goal scored and two conceded per game.
No player on either side carries an active streak worth building on, so the interest here is in the fouls data. Fulham are committing 13.5 fouls per game, fifth most in the Premier League this season, and Timothy Castagne is a big part of that: he has committed a foul in four of his last five matches, an 80% hit rate, averaging 2.2 per game on counts of 3, 2, 0, 2 and 4.
On the Palace side, Chris Richards sits fourth on the model's likelihood board for a foul in this fixture, and Tyrick Mitchell ranks eighth for two or more shots, a reminder that Palace's wide men carry much of their attacking threat.
The referee data points the same way. Samuel Barrott has taken one Premier League game so far this season, and it produced 23 fouls and six yellow cards.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
The value board for this fixture is all about fouls, and one name leads it comfortably. The model ranks Chris Richards fourth most likely on the whole board to commit a foul, while his price of 2.20 at the time of writing ranked just 23rd, the biggest gap between model and market in the match. Richards over 1.5 fouls at 7.00 carried a healthy gap too.
Among the expected home starters, Calvin Bassey for two or more fouls was 5.00 at the time of writing against a model likelihood rank of fourth, and Alex Iwobi at 7.00 for the same market also rated well. Tyrick Mitchell for two or more shots at 5.00 rounds out the angles on players expected to start.
Two further names flagged by the model, Kenny Tete for a shot at 1.83 and Óscar Mingueza for two or more fouls at 4.50, are not in the expected XIs, so treat those as team-news-dependent and check the Statz projections page once the sheets land.
The model gives Fulham the edge in a low-margin game, 1.38 projected goals to 1.22, but nothing here argues for a strong position on the result. The real interest is in the fouls markets, where Chris Richards at 2.20 at the time of writing showed the biggest model-versus-market gap in the fixture and Samuel Barrott's early numbers suggest a card-friendly afternoon. Keep an eye on the team news before acting on the Tete and Mingueza angles.