Fulham have started the season well with just one defeat from their opening five Premier League matches of the season. They’ve scored in all but one of these games which was against Chelsea, a game in which they had a goal wrongly ruled out for a foul, so the Cottagers have been a consistent goal threat this season.

They face an Aston Villa side that is still low on confidence following their laboured start to the season. Unai Emery’s side were offered a bit of relief during the week with a 1-0 win over Bologna to slightly settle some nerves in the Villa camp, but they still looked very vulnerable in that game and allowed the away side to have 17 shots, seven of which found the target and generate an xG of 1.24.

Villa have managed to keep two clean sheets in the Premier League so far this season against Everton and Newcastle but I’d expect Fulham to breach the Villa backline at least once with how they’ve started the season. Fulham only kept five clean sheets in the Premier League last season so they were often forced to come out of their shell to earn a result.

Arsenal are the best defensive side in the Premier League, possibly in Europe, but St James’ Park has been a bogey ground for the Gunners and Mikel Arteta in recent seasons.

Newcastle have won each of the last three head to head meetings between the sides at St James' Park, with all of these victories coming to nil. They beat Arsenal in the league 1-0 at home last season and also battled to a 2-0 win in the second leg of their Carabao Cup tie against Arsenal earlier this year.

Newcastle have had some issues when it comes to finding the back of the net but their attacking options are steadily improving now that Alexander Isak and the noise around him have left the club.

Nick Woltemade has started his Newcastle career strongly with a goal already which came against Wolves. Newcastle also managed to score against Barcelona at St James’ Park which was a game in which they created an xG of 1.22.

Both sides are bound to have one eye on their Champions League assignments during the week with Arsenal welcoming Olympiakos and Newcastle travelling to Union St Gilloise - both winnable games for the Premier League sides. I expect Newcastle to extend their recent impressive record against Arsenal at St James’ Park which is one of the most difficult away grounds to visit in the Premier League.

This should be a really exciting game between two sides that have started the season in fine form. Napoli have won all four of their opening matches as they look to defend their Scudetto crown, netting nine goals across these fixtures.

AC Milan have also started the season brightly under the tutelage of Massimilliano Allegri who has guided the red side of Milan to three wins from their opening four games of the season. They have scored seven goals across these games with the early records of both sides pointing to an exciting evening in Milan.

Napoli have scored in each of their four Serie A games so far this season, netting 2+ goals in three of these games. They scored 27 goals across their 19 away matches last season (1.42 per game) with two of these goals coming in their victory over Milan at the San Siro last season.

Napoli also scored two goals in the reverse fixture as they ran out 2-1 winners. There is no doubt that Napoli are facing a much better Milan side than they did last season, but the advantage still remains with Napoli when considering their impressive start to the season.

Koln have made the best start to the season of any of the newly promoted sides across Europe’s top five leagues. They’ve lost just one of their opening four matches, scoring at least once in each of these games.

They’ve hit high totals of four goals against Freiburg and three goals against Wolfsburg which would suggest that Koln have the scoring power required to compete in the Bundesliga. This is often the biggest issue of promoted sides, they struggle to create and take chances which leaves them camped in their own half. Koln have adopted a bolder approach which can aid them in scoring here.

Stuttgart failed to keep a clean sheet in their Europa League clash with Celta Vigo during the week, coming away 2-1 winners from the game. This should also aid our selection, Koln didn’t have to play in midweek so should have a slight fitness advantage over Stuttgart with the away side also looking on to their away tie against Basel in the Europa League next week.