Poland v Portugal Prediction: Stats suggest BTTS is the stand-out bet

It’s Poland v Portugal on Saturday, October 12, (19:45), a match between two sides who have made a good start to their campaign in Group 1A and are looking to kick on. The game will be streamed live on YouTube.

Portugal-based James Pacheco has plenty of stats up his sleeve to explain why both teams to score and over 9.5 corners bets are the way to go ahead of the match as he takes us through his Poland vs Portugal Predictions...

Poland

The opening match of their Nations League campaign saw them break Scottish hearts late on in proceedings with Nicola Zalewski scoring a penalty in second-half injury time to win the match 3-2.

But that was followed by a 1-0 defeat in Croatia where they were outplayed by the hosts with the evegreen Luka Modic scoring the game’s only goal.

Speaking of evergreen players, Robert Lewandowski still has it at 36 years of age, with 12 goals in 11 matches for Barcelona this season. Inter Milan’s Piotr Zielinski is one to look out for, as well.

Despite coming out of retirement to answer Barcelona’s SOS call, there’s no Wojciech Szczesny in the squad here as the veteran keeper hasn’t extended his volte-face to international football.

Possible XI: Skorupski, Dawidowicz, Walukiewicz, Bednarek, Urbanski, Kaminski, Zielinski, Szymanski, Zalewski, Lewandowski, Bogusz.

Portugal

So far so good for Portugal with back-to-back 2-1 home wins over Croatia and Scotland.

In a very rare case of Cristiano Ronaldo starting on the bench against Scotland last time out, Portugal went with Diogo Jota as the central striker with Rafael Leao and Pedro Neto either side of him; and quickly went a goal down.

Bruno Fernandes equalised before Ronaldo, on at half-time, won it with just two minutes left on the clock. Which was no more than they deserved with 68% possession and 19 shots to Scotland’s two.

So they’re top with an 100% record and a draw or win should see them feel comfortable about topping the group. That said, if they didn’t win here and Croatia were to beat Scotland, they’d know they were in a proper two-horse race with a tricky trip to Croatia still to come.

Roberto Martinez has pretty much a full squad of players to choose from though with the strength in depth they have these days, picking a possible XI is easier said than done. The smart money is on Ronaldo starting this one - a harder match on paper than Scotland - and maybe starting on the bench again next time.

Possible Starting line-up: Costa, Dalot, Dias, Antonio Silva, Mendes, Palhinha, Vitinha, Bernardo Silva, Bruno Fernandes, Leao, Ronaldo.  

Poland vs Portugal Odds

These two have played each other plenty of times over the years: 13 to be precise.

It’s five Portugal wins, five draws and three Poland wins, for the record. But some of those matches date back to the 1970s, so are of limited relevance.

They did however play twice in the inaugural edition of the Nations League in 2018/19. It ended 1-1 in Portugal and 3-2 to Portugal in Poland. So Ronaldo and co have had the better of it in both the long run and in the short-term.

But I’m not sure 4/6 is the right price here.  Poland are unbeaten in their last 10 at home across official qualifiers, Nations League matches and friendlies, so it’s not easy to come here and win. Are Portugal the better side? Yes. Should they be that price? Maybe not.

The 11/4 draw looks the best of the three prices, with Poland 9/2, but we don’t need to play this market.

Looking at these prices through an implied odds' lens, we say the away side should win this match 60% of the time. The hosts have an 18% chance of winning with the draw sitting at 27%.

Both Teams to Score

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest this is the game’s stand-out bet.

Prior to that 1-0 loss in Croatia, Poland had six consecutive BTTS matches including all three of their matches at the Euros.

Portugal aren’t quite the BTTS bankers with five of their last 10 having goals at both ends but that was partly down to a rather strange Euros campaign where they fielded a second team in losing a dead rubber to Georgia, and were then too far cautious in back-to-back 0-0 draws against Slovenia and France that ended up going to penalties.

And five of the last six between them have had BTTS, the odd one out being a 0-0 in 2011/12, so matches between them tend to have goals.

So plenty of stats to suggest that’s the way to go, as is common sense. Both are stronger in attack and given my idea of a correct score here would be 1-1 or maybe 2-1 to either side, odds of 4/5 cover plenty of bases.