Even without several crucial defenders, Japan boast the stronger of the two squads, and, with the added motivation of staying in the top two, we fancy them to get over the line with home advantage.
The Samurai Blue's front three are bound to cause problems for their visitors and Ito, Osako and Minamino should fire their nation to another qualifying win.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Japan win with a probability of 42.19%. A win for China had a probability of 32.55% and a draw had a probability of 25.2%.
The most likely scoreline for a Japan win was 1-0 with a probability of 9.31%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-1 (8.91%) and 2-0 (6.95%). The likeliest China win was 0-1 (7.99%), while for a drawn scoreline it was 1-1 (11.93%). The actual scoreline of 2-0 was predicted with a 7% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Japan would win this match.
