Crewe Alexandra took a little while to light the blue touch paper at the weekend, but the Railwaymen were indomitable once they got going and will not panic should they fall a goal down at Vale Park.
However, the League Two side have already been stunted in this fixture once this season - a regular occurrence nowadays - and we still expect Crosby's in-form troops to continue their hot streak with a comprehensive opening win.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Port Vale win with a probability of 51.47%. A draw had a probability of 24.5% and a win for Crewe Alexandra had a probability of 24.06%.
The most likely scoreline for a Port Vale win was 1-0 with a probability of 11.09%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-1 (9.61%) and 2-0 (9.17%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (11.63%), while for a Crewe Alexandra win it was 0-1 (7.04%). The actual scoreline of 1-0 was predicted with an 11.1% likelihood. Our data analysis correctly predicted a 1-0 win for Port Vale in this match and our team at Sports Mole correctly predicted the win for Port Vale.
0.5) 
-0.29) 
