Cardiff City host Charlton Athletic at 12:30 UK on Saturday 19 September at Cardiff City Stadium, in a Championship fixture between two teams failing at opposite ends of the pitch. Cardiff cannot keep anyone out. Charlton cannot score.
Cardiff are winless in five and have conceded in every league game they have played this season. Charlton have kept three clean sheets in their last five but have managed one goal across the two most recent of them.
Cardiff City carry the least flattering number on the card: a clean-sheet rate of zero, nineteenth of twenty-four in the division, from seven attempts. They concede 1.57 a game and score 1.00, and the recent run reads 0-1 at Bolton, 1-1 with Stoke, 0-2 at Portsmouth, 1-2 at Queens Park Rangers and 2-2 with Sheffield United. Five matches, no wins, a goal scored in three of them.
Charlton Athletic are the mirror image. They rank fourth in the Championship for goals conceded at 1.00 a game and third for clean sheets at 43 per cent, and they have kept two of the last two at home - 0-0 with Portsmouth and 0-0 with Queens Park Rangers. The problem is the other end: 0.86 goals a game, twenty-first of twenty-four, and a 4-0 defeat at Stoke in between the shut-outs. Team sheets are not confirmed.
The model projects 1.62 goals for Cardiff City and 1.08 for Charlton Athletic, a combined 2.70 that sits right on the line the market is pricing. Under 2.5 goals is rated at 49 per cent against 6/5, which is the only selection in the match the model makes better than its price, and only just.
Everything else prices short of what the numbers support. Cardiff to win is 49 per cent against a price implying 59, both teams to score is 54 per cent against a price implying 60. The honest summary is that there is no strong call here, and a fixture where one side has never kept a clean sheet and the other has kept three in seven is exactly the sort that resolves by one of those records breaking rather than by form.
See the live Statz numbers for this fixture.
The referee is Elliot Bell, averaging 4.67 yellow cards and 21 fouls a game this season - a card-heavy appointment by Championship standards, in a match between two sides with little to lose.
The longest live streak in the fixture belongs to Conor Coventry, who has committed at least one foul in seven straight games for Charlton Athletic. Tyler Bindon has done the same in four in a row beside him. For Cardiff, Yousef Salech has hit the target in four consecutive matches, which in a side scoring a goal a game is most of their threat.
Cardiff City are the better side on the model's numbers and at home, but a team that has conceded in every game they have played is not a comfortable favourite against opponents who keep clean sheets at the third-best rate in the division.
The read is a low-scoring Cardiff win or a draw, with the goals line the more interesting half of it. Charlton have produced two goalless draws in their last five and have not scored more than once in a match since the middle of last month.
18+. Please gamble responsibly - begambleaware.org. Odds correct at time of writing and subject to change. Statz publishes model projections, not advice.