Everton vs Leicester City: Writer Prediction League

Last week’s matches against Liverpool and Manchester United had a chance to be season-defining — both for Everton and for the participants in the Royal Blue Mersey Writer Prediction League.

From both the Toffees’ perspective and our own, those matches weren’t short on intrigue. Everton hung around at Anfield for most of the match, powered by a Matthew Pennington (of all people) goal, then held the lead for most of Tuesday’s match again Manchester United.

In the end, Everton lost to Liverpool 3-1, then drew Manchester United 1-1, after a late Zlatan Ibrahimovic penalty leveled the score. Both results had huge implications on our standings. The predictions from those matches are below, with correct guesses in bold.

Most notably, five of us picked a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford, meaning that Ibrahimovic’s late equalizer vastly changed the way things look as we come down the home stretch. Had Ibra not converted that late penalty, the table would look like the following.

After that penalty found its way into the net, though, the standings actually became this:

It was a huge swing at the top of the table, where Calvin now leads me by three points, and Mike has worked his way back into legitimate contention. Instead of leading the group, Tyler now sits seven points back.

This week, Everton faces an in-form Leicester City at Goodison Park with a depleted defense corps. Unsurprisingly, our writers are predicting plenty of goals on Sunday — here are our predictions.

Eight of our 11 writers have actually predicted that Everton will concede at least two goals, while six still believe the Toffees will take all three points. Another four have predicted a draw, while Chris is the lone individual to pick a Leicester victory.