Midtjylland v Atalanta: Goals guaranteed from entertaining Italians

Midtjylland v Atalanta: Goals guaranteed from entertaining Italians

Atalanta's games are normally high-scoring affairs and Dan Fitch would be surprised if their Group D match with Midtjylland is any different.

Midtjylland 6.0 v Atalanta 1.56; The Draw 4.8
Wednesday 21 October, 20:00
Live on BT Sport Extra

Danes make daunting debut

The Danish champions Midtjylland make their debut in the Champions League group stage against Atalanta on Wednesday, in a group that makes for a baptism of fire.

Also in Group D are Ajax and Liverpool. Midtjylland have had to beat Ludogorets, Young Boys and Slavia Prague to get this far, which in itself is a big achievement. With the quality of teams in their group, they should perhaps not bank on winning many more matches in this season's Champions League.

Atalanta reached the quarter-finals last season, where they were close to eliminating the eventual finalists PSG, before conceding two late goals. They suffered their first defeat of the Serie A season on Saturday, with Napoli thrashing them 4-1.

This followed three straight wins and as tends to be the case with Atalanta, every game this season has been full of goals. A 4-2 win at Torino was followed by a 4-1 victory at Lazio and then a 5-2 win over Cagliari.

Italians will win with style

Atalanta were comfortably the top scorers in Serie A last season, with 98 goals. They conceded 48, which means that their matches averaged 3.8 goals-per-game.

With that in mind, a price of 2.16 for over 3.5 goals looks big considering that Atalanta are up against a side with no experience of this stage of the competition. Serie A is no longer the defensively minded league that it was in the past, but standards remain higher than in the Danish top flight.

With Atalanta likely to win this match, it makes sense to go for an away victory and over 3.5 goals at 3.0. It's landed in two of their three away games this season.