Accrington – Portsmouth. Mark O’Haire’s prediction

I’m surprised to see Both Teams To Score trading at 1.73 here. Those odds suggest there’s just under a 58% chance of this selection winning on Tuesday but almost everything points towards goals.

Accrington have failed to score in their last two fixtures – a 1-0 loss at Yeovil and a 0-0 draw at Wimbledon – but Stanley won the shot count in both fixtures, as they have done consistently in 2015/16. At Wimbledon on Saturday, the visitors had a bizarre goal ruled out too – it’s worth a YouTube.

No League Two side are averaging more shots-on-target than John Coleman’s charges’ 5.85 per-game and back at their Crown Ground home, Accy have notched in each of their last 18 – you have to go back 12 months for the last time the hosts failed to find the net in front of their home supporters.

Since the start of last season, Accrington have scored in 35/38 (92%) of their home fixtures but only kept six clean sheets; unsurprisingly, that’s led to 29/38 (76%) of BTTS winners, including 13/15 (87%) this season.

Portsmouth kept a rare clean sheet at struggling Stevenage on Saturday and although Pompey haven’t shipped more than a single goal in any of their last 11 League Two matches, they’ve shutout just three of those 11 opponents. And in 40 fixtures on the road since the beginning of 2014/15, the south-coast club have kept their sheets clean on just eight occasions.

During Cook’s tenure, Portsmouth have silenced just three of their 17 hosts and further back that record reads just three clean sheets in 25 away league games. A chunky 13/17 (76%) of Pompey’s road trips this term, including all eight at top-half teams have delivered winning Both Teams To Score bets, as well as 23/40 (58%) when going back to last season.

If we took the pure BTTS stats from both teams’ respective home and away games this season, we’d be looking at an 81.5% chance of a repeat here. Go back to last season and the percentage figure drops to 67%.

In both instances, the implied odds and percentage probability is streets ahead of the advertised odds and makes this Both Teams To Score bet a big value selection.

Editor’s update: after the prediction was published, odds moved from 1.73 to 2.00.