Good Morning ☀️,

It’s Lucas here, your Chief Predictions Officer at What Are the Odds?

The weekend’s here. And with it, another hot lineup of games across the top leagues. So let’s get straight into it.

What’s ahead in today’s edition of What Are the Odds?:

• This weekend’s Premier League + Bundesliga match schedule. 🗓️

• Our top three picks from this weekend’s Premier League/Bundesliga games. ✅

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This weekend, we’ve got a bunch of great matches coming up across the Bundesliga and Premier League. (Note: all dates and times are in CEST)

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Premier League

Friday 04 September

• 21:00 — Ipswich vs Liverpool

Saturday 05 September

• 13:30 — Newcastle vs Bournemouth

• 16:00 — Brentford vs Sunderland

• 16:00 — Brighton vs Leeds

• 16:00 — Fulham vs Crystal Palace

• 16:00 — Man City vs Coventry City

• 16:00 — Nottingham Forest vs Tottenham

• 18:30 — Hull City vs Aston Villa

Sunday 06 September

• 15:00 — Everton vs Man Utd

• 17:30 — Arsenal vs Chelsea

🇩🇪 Bundesliga

Friday 04 September

• 20:30 — Stuttgart vs FC Cologne

Saturday 05 September

• 15:30 — Borussia Monchengladbach vs SV Elversberg

• 15:30 — Bayer Leverkusen vs Union Berlin

• 15:30 — Hoffenheim vs Borussia Dortmund

• 15:30 — SC Paderborn 07 vs Freiburg

• 15:30 — Werder Bremen vs RB Leipzig

• 18:30 — Schalke 04 vs Bayern Munich

Sunday 06 September

• 15:30 — Hamburg vs Mainz

• 17:30 — Eintracht Frankfurt vs Augsburg

Want to get the best odds on these matches?

⚽ Ipswich vs Liverpool
🏟️ English Premier League
📅 Friday 04 September; 21:00 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Liverpool’s winless in 8 straight Premier League matches.

  • Liverpool hasn’t lost a league match at Ipswich since the 1985-86 season.

  • Ipswich's opening two Premier League games have produced 10 goals (4 scored, 6 conceded) — the third-highest of any side this season.

• CXSports says: The head-to-head history here looks promising for Liverpool. Particularly when you consider that they’ve gone unbeaten at Ipswich for close to 40 years. However, there’s a catch here — the Liverpool that hasn’t lost at Portman Road since 1985-86 might be more of a fun fact about a football club more than it is a fact about the eleven men who’ll actually be slugging this one out. Unfortunately for them, they’re sitting 13th in the table on 2 points, one place and one point worse off than newly-promoted Ipswich.
  
  And this lackluster run for Liverpool probably isn’t just a case of early season jitters. If we include last season, this team hasn’t won a Premier League match in 8 attempts. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s also currently missing seven players due to injuries, all while being led by a manager three months into the job who's still figuring out his best eleven. In other words, the history’s probably close to irrelevant here.
  
  As for Ipswich, they’ve shown some promise. They can clearly score against good teams (4 goals in 2 games), even if that has come at the expense of concessions (6 goals in 2). However, 5 of those concessions came in an away game against Man United, which is a bit of a different setup to what they’ll be facing here — a home game against a flailing Liverpool.
  
  So if we put all that together, what does that leave us with? Chances are, this will probably be one of the more genuinely competitive, high-goal matches we’ll see this weekend. And while we’d probably lean liverpool ever so slightly if we were forced to pick one or the other, the reality on the ground is that this specific Liverpool side is too leaky and too low on confidence to pull through. As such, we see this as having a good chance of ending in a draw.

• Score prediction: 2-2 Draw

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Draw

• Odds Range: 4.10-5.08

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (Yes)

• Odds Range: 1.40-1.59

⚽ Manchester City vs Coventry City
🏟️ English Premier League
📅 Saturday 05 September; 16:00 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • These two haven’t met in 24-years (with Coventry’s Premier League absence being the longest return gap in the competition’s history).

  • City sit at +4 (6 scored, 2 conceded) from two games while Coventry is the mirror opposite: -4 (0 scored, 4 conceded) from two games.

  • City have lost just once in their last 21 home league matches (and that single defeat came in a meaningless final-day game).

• CXSports says: This one’s so imbalanced it’s hardly even a fair fight. On one side, we’ve got Coventry making its first trip to a place like Etihad Stadium in its first season in the top-flight in 24 years. And on the other, we’ve got Man City — a side that’s only lost a single game in its last 21 games at that stadium (and that last loss was in a meaningless final day game after the season was already decided).
  
  And the numbers here don’t really do much to change that basic setup. While Coventry City might have finished last season with 97 goals in 46 games, leaving them with a scoring average of 2.11 goals per game (outdoing every other team by at least 15 goals), those impressive numbers were posted in the Championship. However, their early performance in the Premier League tends to suggest those numbers aren’t going to carry over. This season, two games into their return to the top flight, Coventry have scored exactly zero goals while conceding four.
  
  Meanwhile, Manchester City has been plodding along as though nothing’s changed since last season. They’ve scored 6 and only conceded 2, leaving them with a goal difference of +4 against Coventry's -4, which is about as obvious of a signal as you’re ever likely to find in football.
  
  So that leaves us with a simple question — if the away side hasn't found the net yet and the home side’s averaging a goal difference of +2 per game, then what hope does the visiting team have? Well, in their more respectable performance of the season — a 1-0 home loss to Hull City — Coventry did hold 68% of the ball and outshoot Hull City by 11 attempts to 6. So that's a team that at least seems to be creating chances. The only problem is, of course, that chances are meaningless if 100% fail to convert. And that’s not likely to change here, particularly given Haji Wright (their top scorer) is out injured alongside two other first-team regulars.
  
  And so that really only leaves us with one rational conclusion. City are going to take the victory here with ease.

• Score prediction: 4-1 for Manchester City

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Manchester City Victory

• Odds Range: 1.12-1.21

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Over/Under (Over 3.5)

• Odds Range: 1.72-1.97

⚽ Schalke 04 vs Bayern Munich
🏟️ German Bundesliga
📅 Saturday 05 September; 18:30 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Bayern has won the last 5 head-to-head meetings by a ridiculous margin (21-0 on aggregate).

  • In their last 5 matches, Bayern’s delivered a +13 goal difference while Schalke’s on -5.

  • Harry Kane hit 98 Bundesliga goals in 95 games (the fastest to that mark in league history). And now he gets to face a leaky Schalke.

• CXSports says: There's really only one thing running in Schalke’s favor here — they get to play this one at home in front of a big home crowd that’s probably going to be a little more amped up than usual given this team hasn't touched the top-flight in three years. However, that’s probably about the where Schalke’s advantages end.
  
  Let’s start with the head-to-head history. Bayern has won every single one of their last five head-to-heads with Schalke. And not by a little bit. The aggregate score across those matches is 21-0. And yes, that’s zero, as in five straight clean sheets, with the most recent game ending 6-0. And if we stretch the history out to the the last twelve meetings, things don’t look much better — the aggregate sits at 42-2.
  
  Recent form also points in the same direction. Bayern’s won each of their last five matches over the past month with 16 goals scored and just 3 conceded. And those goals weren’t just the result of one big blowout against a weak team — 11 of them came during actually-competitive fixtures. Meanwhile, Schalke’s only victories are two wins over much weaker opponents — a 5-2 extra-time win over second-tier Hallescher FC, and a 5-0 friendly win over amateur side Hessen Kassel. When faced with real competition in the other 3, they lost without scoring a single goal with the most recent result being a 3-0 defeat to Augsburg. (And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, that game also cost them midfielder Ron Schallenberg who copped a red card and a suspension for this game.) In other words, we’ve got one side with a goal difference of +13 over their last five (Bayern), while the other’s on -5 (Schalke), which should probably be closer to -10 if we get rid of that game they played against an amateur team.
  
  So where does this leave us? Well, maybe as a newly-promoted side pumped up on adrenaline and a roaring home crowd, maybe Schalke manages to score a goal here. Unfortunately, even if they manage that, Bayern looks like they’re set to steam roll the home side by a multi-goal margin.

• Score prediction: 1-4 for Bayern Munich

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Bayern Munich Victory

• Odds Range: 1.08-1.20

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Over/Under (Over 2.5)

• Odds Range: 1.16-1.28

Make your sportsbook work for you!

That’s a wrap for today. We’ll be back early next week with a look ahead to the first round of the Champions League proper (now the qualifications are over).

Until then, enjoy the football.