AC Pisa 1909 vs SSC Napoli

One meeting is all our records hold, because Pisa were not in the top flight last season and this is their first campaign back. The reverse fixture was played in Naples on 22 September and finished 3-2 to the hosts, with Napoli 1-0 ahead at the interval. It is the single most encouraging ninety minutes on Pisa's record against a side of this quality: they scored twice away from home against the reigning champions, who won the title last season with 82 points, 59 scored and 27 conceded.

We would not build much on one game, and the direction of travel since September has been unkind to the promoted side. But the honest reading of the only evidence available is that this specific pairing produced a five-goal contest rather than a procession, and that Pisa were not shut out.

Napoli were champions last season on 82 points. Pisa have no top-flight record from that campaign at all, and their first year back has been chastening. They arrive bottom on 18 points from 36 matches with a goal difference of -41, from 25 goals scored and 66 conceded. Two wins, twelve draws, twenty-two defeats.

The two wins both came at home, against Cremonese on 7 November and Cagliari on 15 March. The twelve draws are the more interesting number, and eight of them came on the road: 1-1 at Atalanta, 2-2 at Milan, 2-2 at Torino, 2-2 at Sassuolo, 2-2 at Cagliari, 1-1 at Genoa, 2-2 at Udinese and 0-0 at Verona. At the Arena the record is two wins, four draws and twelve defeats from eighteen, with nine goals scored and 23 conceded. All four home draws came in the first half of the season — 0-0 with Fiorentina, 0-0 with Verona, 0-0 with Lazio and 1-1 with Atalanta on 16 January — and there has not been one since. They come into this on six straight league defeats, the last of them 3-0 at Cremonese on 10 May, and have not won since 15 March.

Napoli sit second on 70 points from 36 at +18: twenty-one wins, seven draws, eight defeats. The goal difference is worth pausing on. A side second in the table with +18 is winning narrowly rather than overwhelming opponents, and the away record bears that out: nine wins, three draws and six defeats from eighteen on the road, 22 scored and 18 conceded. All six of those away defeats were early, the most recent at Atalanta on 22 February, and they have since gone unbeaten in four on their travels — 1-2 at Verona, 0-1 at Cagliari, 1-1 at Parma and 0-0 at Como on 2 May.

Their last four overall are patchier than second place suggests: beaten 0-2 at home by Lazio on 18 April, a 4-0 home win over Cremonese on 24 April, the goalless draw at Como, and a 2-3 home defeat by Bologna on 11 May.

The case for the home side, such as it is, rests on three things. Pisa draw games — a third of their season has been drawn, and eight of those came away from home against better-placed opposition. Napoli's away scoring is modest for a title contender, 22 in eighteen. And Napoli have dropped points in three of their last four, including two home defeats.

The case against is heavier. Nine goals in eighteen home matches is a scoring record that makes any result other than a defeat hard to engineer; Pisa's four home draws were all goalless or near it, and all of them came before the middle of January. Six consecutive defeats immediately before this fixture is a run without a single point in it. And the visitors have a reason to be at full stretch: second with two rounds remaining and a table that has not settled, they cannot afford to drop anything.

There is one further factor that cuts both ways. Pisa on 18 points with two games left are in desperate trouble at the foot of the table, and a squad in that position at this stage of a season either digs in or lets go. We have no way of knowing which, and the last six results point at the second.

The published pick is Double Chance 1X (AC Pisa 1909 or Draw) at 1.42 with medium confidence, and we will make the case for it without dressing it up. The argument is that Pisa's season has been one long sequence of narrow losses and stubborn draws rather than collapses, that they have taken points off Atalanta, Milan, Torino, Sassuolo, Udinese and Verona already, that they scored twice at Napoli in September, and that the visitors have looked short of their best in the last month while conceding five goals across two home games.

The weakness is obvious and should be stated. A price of 1.42 implies something close to a seven-in-ten chance that the bottom club avoids defeat against the side in second, and nothing in Pisa's home record supports that: two wins in eighteen, nine goals, no draw at this ground since January, and six straight defeats in the approach. The medium confidence label sits at the optimistic end of what the numbers justify, and a shorter, safer construction of the same idea was available.

The thing that beats it is the simplest thing in football: a visiting side that only needs to be marginally better. Napoli have won nine away this season, several of them by a single goal, and against a home team that has scored nine at this ground all year, one goal has usually been enough.