Writer Prediction League: Everton vs. Crystal Palace

Much like Everton, our writers here at Royal Blue Mersey got off to a surprisingly good start this season, but have tragically come spiraling back to earth over the course of the last couple of weeks.

Everton's 1-0 loss to Bournemouth on Saturday caught us all by surprise -- so much so that our writers didn't even manage to pick up a single point! Here's a reminder of our very wrong predictions:

No one picked Junior Stanislas to score the opener, Maarten Stekelenburg as Everton's man of the match, or a Bournemouth victory of any scoreline, so this week's leaderboard looks exactly the same as last week's. There was an error in the discussion of last week's prediction league results, but the scores were correct, so there are no changes to the scoreboard now:

Darren, Tyler, and I are still atop the leaderboard, with Calvin, Ryan, and Troy hot in pursuit.

This week, confidence in the Toffees remains pretty high, though a little more doubt has crept into the minds of our writers. Against Crystal Palace, our staff has the following predictions.

Though no writers picked Everton to lose to Alan Pardew's side, two predicted 2-2 draws at Goodison Park on Friday. Three writers picked Crystal Palace players to score the match's opening goal -- two went with Belgian striker Christian Benteke, and Sean chose Wilfried Zaha.

Three writers foresee Ross Barkley breaking out of his recent funk, with Brian picking him to score the opener, and Ryan and Sean choosing the Englishman as their predicted MOTM. Ryan also went slightly off the grid with his opening goalscorer, predicting that Gueye will get Everton on the board.

Other than those few interesting choices, there aren't a ton of surprises among these picks. Eight writers predicted an Everton victory, three a Lukaku opening goal, and three a Gueye man-of-the-match performance -- each of which have been the most popular choices of the season thus far.