England v Canada: Lethal Lionesses won't be silenced by the hosts

England v Canada
Sunday, 00:30
Live on BBC One and British Eurosport

England

If you focus exclusively on the results - which some would suggest isn't a bad idea from a punting perspective - then England have over-delivered in Canada.

They kept the score down to 1-0 when beaten by third favourites France, who eliminated them in 2011, in their opener, then rallied with 2-1 successes over Mexico and Colombia to take second in the group, before defeating former champions Norway by the same scoreline in the round-of-16.

Indeed, this is statistically the Lionesses' greatest ever World Cup already. It is the first one in which they have won three games, and they achieved all of those in a sequence. Even if England exit in the quarters for the third World Cup in a row, they will depart with a 60% win rate - their best yet.

However, it hasn't felt like the breakout tournament that those numbers depict. Instead, there is a similar vibe to the one around the men's squad in 2006, when they kept progressing but without inspiring much belief that they could go the distance. Their ceiling proved to be the quarter-finals.

Mark Sampson's side surrendered very meekly against a France team that would lose 2-0 to unremarkable Colombia in their next outing and haven't confronted a FIFA world ranking top-ten opponent since, while they were largely outplayed by Norway in the previous round.

Canada

The positive for the Lionesses is that this isn't a superpower like USA, Germany or Japan that they are up against. Canada are good, but certainly not unbeatable, which is why they are two places below England in the world rankings.

Their progress has been serene thus far, though that owes an assist to their seeding advantage as hosts ensuring that they haven't had to face anyone fearsome. China, New Zealand, Netherlands and Switzerland are ranked 16th, 17th, 12th and 19th respectively, so England are their first top-ten adversaries.

Additionally, the past two World Cup hosts were eliminated in the quarter-finals by teams that had failed to reach the semi-finals at the edition four years earlier, so there is a precedent.

Then again, another precedent that England backers won't want to hear is that they lost 1-0 to Canada in a pre-tournament friendly four weekends ago.

Match Odds: England 3.60, Canada 2.38, The Draw 3.20

Canada probably deserve to be favourites having gone undefeated this far into the competition on home soil and triumphed over England last month.

Yet there are enough doubts - the calibre of their conquered, England winning the four prior head-to-heads (one as recently as March) and the Lionesses' flair for grinding out victories - to inflate the outsiders' chances and persuade us to avoid a match outcome punt in favour of the following...

Canada Clean Sheet? No

Canada have conceded just once in four fixtures to date, though it is again worth noting that they haven't been challenged by a particularly taxing attack.

England are far more of a threat, striking not once but twice in each of their latest three encounters. Nobody else in the competition can rival that streak.

Yes, they didn't net in the aforementioned tune-up clash with Canada, yet that was their first blank in five showdowns with them since March 2013.

The extent to which a low scoreline is anticipated means that you can find appealing odds of2.40 on both teams scoring but, because the seven scraps between these sides this decade have all been won to nil, the safer option is to simply oppose the Canadian clean sheet at odds of around 1.75.