Millwall v West Ham prediction: Lineups, team news and betting tips

There's a version of this fixture where Millwall's home form does the talking, and there's another where West Ham simply turn up and score for fun, and right now the second version is winning the argument.

West Ham have won four of their last five in the league and look like a side building real momentum under a settled system, while Millwall have lost three of their last six and are still patching up a midfield that's had chunks ripped out of it by injury.

The Den has never been an easy place to visit, but this West Ham side has looked comfortable wherever it's played this season.

West Ham sit second in the Championship on 15 points from eight games, just two behind leaders Swansea, and the underlying numbers back up the table position.

They've scored 22 goals this season at a rate of 2.86 a game across their last seven, with an expected goals figure of 2.3 a match that suggests the output isn't a fluke.

Their away record this season reads one win, three draws and no defeats from four games, with eight goals scored and seven conceded, which points to a side that travels well without always shutting up shop.

The form line tells its own story too: four wins and a draw in their last five, with wins over Wrexham, Bolton, Derby and Wolves in that spell.

Millwall's season has had its moments, three wins from six games including a 4-0 thumping of Bolton and a 3-0 win over Norwich, but the away form has been genuinely alarming, with 2.7 goals conceded per game on the road and a 5-1 defeat at Southampton in there.

At home it's a different, more encouraging picture. Millwall have won two of their three at The Den this season and conceded only three goals in those games, so there is a foundation here even if the recent run of results (three defeats in their last six overall) makes for uncomfortable reading.

Millwall's record over their last six league games reads three wins and three defeats with no draws, a streaky sort of form that has swung between a 4-0 win over Bolton and a 5-1 mauling at Southampton inside the space of a fortnight. West Ham's six-game split of three wins, two draws and a single defeat looks far steadier by comparison, and the underlying trend backs that up: this is a side picking up points consistently rather than lurching between extremes. Millwall's home form offers some hope, but on the bigger picture, West Ham arrive with the calmer story to tell.

West Ham's second place, 15 points from eight games and a goal difference of plus 11, puts them right in the thick of the automatic promotion picture, just two points shy of leaders Swansea. A win at The Den keeps the pressure on the top spot and extends an away record that already reads one defeat in four this season.

Millwall don't appear among the league's leading pack this season, and their season so far, three wins and three defeats from six games, points to a side still finding its level rather than one pushing for anything at the top. A result against West Ham wouldn't change the shape of Millwall's campaign overnight, but it would be exactly the kind of scalp that settles a nervy home crowd.

The two clubs have shared a league pitch just twice on record, with West Ham winning one and the other finishing level, an average of 1.5 goals per meeting with both teams scoring in half of those games. The last one, a 2-1 West Ham win at Boleyn Ground, was played back on 4 February 2012, which tells you how rarely these two have actually crossed paths in the Championship in recent years.

With a sample size that thin, there's not much to lean on from history alone, and this fixture is really being decided by the two teams' current form rather than any long-running rivalry. The goals markets look the more interesting angle than anything the head-to-head throws up, given how often both sides have been finding the net lately regardless of the opponent.

West Ham have averaged 55.9% possession in their recent form sample against Millwall's 45.4%, and that gap shows up directly on the shooting stats: West Ham are landing 5.86 shots on target a game to Millwall's 3.71. Millwall have also been conceding 6.86 corners a game on average recently against West Ham's 5, which points to a home side under sustained pressure rather than one soaking it up and hitting on the break. If Millwall are going to disrupt that pattern, doing it through set pieces and moments of transition looks a lot more realistic than trying to out-possess their visitors.

Kick-off is at 12:30 BST on Saturday 19 September, and the match is shown on Sky Sports where selected, with Sky Sports+ carrying the stream for subscribers. Anyone without access can catch highlights after the final whistle.

The goals markets carry the most weight on this card, with both sides comfortably clearing 2.5 in the majority of their recent outings, but there's value scattered across the result and scorer markets too given the gulf in current form between these two.