Everton v. Huddersfield Town: Writer Prediction League

It was a busy week for Everton Football Club last week, with two matches in five days and an injury crisis beginning to loom.

Given the circumstances, the Toffees did what you’d have to call the bare minimum to call the week a success — an away draw to Bournemouth (despite having a two-goal lead) and a comfortable, if not mind-blowing 3-1 victory against Rotherham in the Carabao Cup.

This week, success is quite easy to define. The Toffees host struggling Huddersfield Town in a match where, even with injuries and suspensions abounding, anything short of a victory should be seen as an utter failure.

Before we look ahead to that match though, let’s take a quick look back at our predictions from last week, starting with Bournemouth.

Brian L. was the big winner last Saturday, picking up five points. He only missed out on the Everton man of the match — he picked Richarlison and well...you know how that went.

Only Calvin joined Brian in getting the final score right, though four others did have a draw in their predictions.

The predictable outcome of the Rotherham match, but the unpredictable nature of lineup selection for Carabao Cup matches, gave us some interesting results in the predictions for the Wednesday match.

Everyone got Everton right as the winner (shocking, I know), while only Calvin and I got the final score correct.

No one had Gylfi Sigurdsson opening the scoring, presumably because none of us thought that he would play. And with Oumar Niasse struggling, Bernard out, and Dowell quiet, most of our first scorer and man of the match predictions went out the window.

Since the majority of our writers didn’t get a chance to actually watch the match, we were torn between naming Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Lucas Digne the man of the match — but none of us picked either player, so it’s really a moot point.

This week, Everton host the worst team in the Premier League so far (non West Ham category). Huddersfield had a pretty unfortunate start to the season — hosting Chelsea on opening day, then traveling to Manchester City for their second match. They lost those two games by a combined score of 9-1.

They followed that up with a goalless draw against Cardiff and a 2-0 loss to Stoke City in the Carabao cup midweek.

It’s hard to imagine a much worse start to a season (again, unless you’re West Ham). So, it should come as no surprise that our writers are pretty optimistic about Everton’s chances.

Everybody but Zach has the Toffees taking all three points at home this weekend.

Thus far, Richarlison had been among the most popular choices for first scorer and man of the match, but with his suspension, we had to get a little creative.

Gylfi Sigurdsson is the most popular man of the match candidate, with Theo Walcott taking second place. We also like Cenk Tosun to get off the mark with the opener in this one.