Nagoya Grampus vs Urawa Red Diamonds 08/08/20

08 August 2020

Nagoya Grampus and Urawa Red Diamonds will face off against each other at Toyota Stadium this weekend in a potentially high-scoring J1 League contest. Notably, three of their last four top-flight H2Hs have featured over 3.5 goals and both teams scoring.

Although a 1-0 home loss to Kashiwa last weekend brought Nagoya’s three-game winning run in J1 League to halt, the hosts quickly bounced back to beat Shimizu S-Pulse 3-0 on the road in midweek’s YBC Levain Cup showdown. A comprehensive triumph over Shimizu also means that six of Nagoya’s seven competitive results (wins/losses) this calendar year saw the winner on the day keep a clean sheet. The ‘Grampus’ have picked up a little bit of everything from the opening three league home fixtures this season (W1, D1, L1), with both of those results seeing the identical 1-0 scoreline and the winning goal arriving no earlier than the hour mark. A draw seems to be a highly unlikely scenario here, though, considering just two of their 23 competitive H2Hs held at this stadium ended in a stalemate (W13, L8).

Meanwhile, the visitors have gone from back-to-back J1 League defeats to two straight games without a loss (W1, D1), but they go into this meeting on the back of a 1-0 away loss to Cerezo Osaka in the YBC Levain Cup. The ‘clean-sheet’ theme has been critically important to Urawa’s recent results across various competitions. Indeed, while two of their last three competitive victories saw them shut out their opponents, all of their previous three defeats were ‘to nil.’ Also, the ‘Reds’ have been quite decent away from home in the early stage of the J1 League season (W3, L1), with each of those three triumphs seeing Urawa score over 1.5 goals and find the net beyond the 80-minute mark.