The London Derbies Cheat Sheet

London has more Premier League clubs than any other city, which means more derbies than any other city. Some are open, attacking affairs that produce 2-2s and 3-1s. Others are tight, scrappy 1-0s. Knowing which is which is the difference between a good prediction round and a bad one.

This is the cheat sheet. If you are deep in the fixture list on ScoreBadger and want a quick reference for the various London derbies, start here.

The Big Three: Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea

Matches between Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea are typically the highest-profile London derbies and the most open. Both sides usually want to win, both have attacking options, and the games tend to flow rather than grind. Common scorelines:

• Arsenal vs Tottenham: 2-1, 2-2, 1-1, occasionally 3-1 or 3-2
• Arsenal vs Chelsea: 2-1, 1-1, 2-0, with some higher-scoring outliers
• Tottenham vs Chelsea: similarly open, often decided by late goals
• Three- and four-goal totals appear more often than the league average
• Goalless draws are rarer than the typical league rate of around 7 to 9%

These fixtures sit firmly in big six territory and behave like it, as we cover in our piece on what to expect from top teams.

West Ham Derbies

West Ham fixtures against the bigger London clubs sit somewhere between the open big-three derbies and the tighter mid-table ones. The London Stadium has become a tougher venue than people give it credit for, and West Ham have a history of taking points off Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea more often than the league table would suggest.

Common scorelines when West Ham play one of the big three:

• 1-1 and 2-1 in either direction are the most common results
• 0-0 appears slightly more often than in the big-three matchups
• West Ham home wins of 2-1 or 1-0 are not unusual
• Higher-scoring results happen but are less frequent than the Arsenal vs Tottenham profile

Crystal Palace Derbies

Selhurst Park is a particular kind of venue. The pitch is tight, the crowd is loud, and visiting teams often look uncomfortable from the first minute. Crystal Palace at home is one of the more underrated home fixtures in the league, and predictions need to account for that.