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The transfer window is closed, and that can mean only one thing — Premier League football is back!
Everton opens its season away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, a recently promoted side with big ambitions and a checkbook to match.
As part of our weekly matches previews here at RBM, our writers participate in what we call the Writer Prediction League. Each week, our writers make predictions for each upcoming Everton match, and earn a certain number of points for each correct guess.
The writer with the most points at the end of the season wins!
Our fearless leader Calvin has dominated the competition since we introduced it in the 2015-16 season — winning the league the first year and coming in second to our good buddy Mike last season, who has stepped away from the blog to take time to further his education.
Some priorities that guy’s got, right?
Without further ado, here are the categories each writer will make predictions for each week, and their associated number of points.
- Opening goalscorer — 1 point
- Everton Man of the Match (as voted by RBM’s readers) — 1 point
- Final outcome of the match (win/loss/draw) — 2 points
- Final score of the match — 2 points
So, a writer can pick up 6 points per match with some solid prognosticating — but don’t hold your breath for that, we’ve proven not to be very good at this.
With that caveat made clear, let’s take a look at our predictions for the weekend.
Wolves Predictions
| Writer | First Scorer | Everton MOTM | Winner | Score | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writer | First Scorer | Everton MOTM | Winner | Score | Points |
| Adam | Jota | Walcott | Draw | 2-2 | 4 |
| Brian F. | Richarlison | Richarlison | Draw | 2-2 | 6 |
| Brian L. | Tosun | Tosun | Draw | 1-1 | 2 |
| Calvin | Neves | Richarlison | Wolves | 2-1 | 1 |
| Chris | Walcott | Richarlison | Draw | 2-2 | 3 |
| Danny | |||||
| Geno | Richarlison | Sigurdsson | Everton | 2-1 | 1 |
| Matt A. | Tosun | Sigurdsson | Everton | 2-1 | 0 |
| Matthew C. | Richarlison | Gueye | Everton | 2-1 | 1 |
| Pete | Jimenez | Richarlison | Draw | 1-1 | 3 |
| Rachel | Richarlison | Richarlison | Everton | 2-0 | 2 |
| Sean | Tosun | Richarlison | Everton | 2-1 | 1 |
| Tom | Neves | Richarlison | Draw | 2-2 | 5 |
| Zach | Tosun | Coleman | Draw | 1-1 | 2 |
We’ve only got one writer predicting defeat for Everton on opening day — that’s Calvin, who has been telling the RBM staff for weeks that Wolves are a candidate to sneak up on people and make some noise this season.
The other results are pretty split, with seven predicting draws and five predicted Everton victories.
Richarlison and Cenk Tosun are the most popular choices to open the scoring, while the Brazilian winger has run away with the man of the match predictions.