Every so often the model produces a set of numbers so level they are almost funny. Ipswich 35.6%, draw 30.8%, Sunderland 33.6%. Three outcomes, one game, and not a cigarette paper between them. The market has come to the same conclusion, with both sides hovering around 2.70 to 2.80.
These are two clubs the projection expects to finish within a couple of points of each other in May, both hovering above the drop, both knowing that games against the other sides in that huddle are the ones that decide seasons. That is a lot of tension for the third Saturday in August.
Kickoff is 3:00pm UK. Numbers from the live Statz match centre.
Ipswich hand a first Premier League start to Emersonn, with Florentino and Saša Lukić in front of the back four and Fatawu and Maeda providing the width. Matusiwa and Taylor are out.
Sunderland's spine is the story: Granit Xhaka setting the tempo, Enzo Le Fée doing the running, and Dan Ballard at the back, the £5.0m defender our own FPL model rates as the best points-per-million pick in the game. Alderete and Mukiele carry doubts.
Ipswich predicted XI (4-2-3-1): Scherpen; Davis, Diop, Greaves, O'Shea; Florentino, Lukić; Maeda, Núñez, Fatawu; Emersonn.
Sunderland predicted XI (4-2-3-1): Roefs; Reinildo, Ballard, O'Nien, Hume; Sadiki, Xhaka; Angulo, E.Le Fée, Talbi; Brobbey.
Ipswich closed last season DWDDW, Sunderland LDDWW. Scrappy, both of them. The projections match: 1.24 goals to 1.20, clean sheets at 30.2% and 29.0%. There is genuinely nothing between these teams on any measure the model can find.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
Referee Farai Hallam's early sample runs at 26 fouls and four yellow cards a game, which matters in a fixture that is going to be settled in the middle of the pitch rather than in either box.
That points at the cards market. Issa Diop to be carded at 4.33 is the pick: a 28.1% chance on a centre-back who has picked up three in his last five, in a game where Sunderland will run at him. Enzo Le Fée's tackles line is the other one worth noting - three or more in each of his last five, and the model has him at 49.4% for 3+ at 2.50, though tackles come from our commentary data and carry more noise than the shots and cards markets.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
There is no bet on the result here. When a model splits three ways at 35/31/34 and the prices reflect exactly that, the honest answer is that nobody knows.
Both teams to score at 2.05 is where I land instead. The model has it at 50.4%, which makes better than evens a small edge, and the game state supports it: two nervous sides who will both feel they should be winning, in a fixture where the first goal opens the game rather than closing it.
The bet: Both teams to score at 2.05.
The tightest game of the weekend, refereed by someone who lets it flow, between two teams who will spend the season looking nervously downwards.
Leave the result alone. Take a shade of odds-against about both sides finding the net in a match neither can afford to lose but both need to win.