The Belgians are in a decent position at the top of Group F, sitting alongside Austria on 10 points. Estonia sit bottom of the group with only a draw away against Azerbaijan to their name in this campaign.

The basis of this bet is to back the Belgians to be able to rack up a decent number of chances against Estonia. At this stage of the qualifying campaign, only a four-match sample, Belgium are averaging 1.84xG in their matches. These matches included three away ties and a difficult home match against Austria, so they will be slightly suppressed from a typical average.

These two nations have already played in this qualification group, with Belgium coming out 3-0 winners in Estonia. Though a late goal was required to push that match over the 2.5 goal line, the measure of control that Belgium were able to exert over Estonia, despite being away from home, was encouraging.

Despite only winning 1-0 in Azerbaijan a couple of days ago, the Red Devils did show a similar level of dominance there. They won the shot count 15-8, racked up 13 corners, and generated 1.88xG.

Though there is something of a rebuild going on for Belgium, there is more than enough talent in the starting XI, and on the bench, to score the goals required to get over the 2.5 goal line. Romelu Lukaku is still starting, and still scoring, with Johan Bakayoko coming up trumps with regular assists on one side and Yannick Carrasco finding the net on Saturday in Azerbaijan. Lois Openda and Jeremy Doku, both major signings in the summer, are available to add impact to the front line as well.

There is a well-known mine of talent coming through Israeli football at the moment. Their age group teams are doing well at major tournaments and some of that talent is beginning to seep into their senior team as well.

Importantly for this bet, both teams have forwards that are able to score at this level of international competition, and history suggests that the odds for over 2.5 goals here are acceptable.

The Israel team features Manor Solomon who has recently signed for Tottenham Hotspur, he is probably the team’s biggest threat, averaging three shots a match this campaign. Celtic’s Liel Abada will probably occupy the other wide position, and new Red Bull Salzburg recruit, Oscar Gloukh, star of the age-group Israeli teams, is making an impact in attacking midfield.

There are fewer well-known names in the Belarus team, but Max Ebong has probably been the star man in this campaign. The Astana attacker has two goals to his name and has started every qualifying match so far.

Both teams have played five matches in the qualification campaign so far and average over 1xG per match, Israel at 1.63 and Belarus at 1.14. Israel have seen 13 goals in their matches, with 60% of the matches going over 2.5 goals. Belarus have seen 14 goals, 10 against, and 80% of the matches have gone over 2.5 goals.

Also, every time these nations have met, the score has been 2-1. Israel have won twice and Belarus have won twice. Whilst one wouldn’t want to lean heavily on historical data such as this, the latest of the encounters was earlier in this group, and also, it does say something about the nature of the match-up that whilst often evenly matches, they are both capable of scoring goals.