Everton vs Arsenal: Writer Prediction League

The Leicester City match on Wednesday concluded with perhaps the strangest combination of pride and disappointment I’ve ever felt in a sporting event.

Everton, beleaguered by injuries, illness, and just general year-long struggles, came back from down 2-0 to send the tie to penalties after Leighton Baines, in what could be his last truly meaningful contribution to the club, scored a rocket of an equalizer in stoppage time. But it all came up short in penalties.

The Toffees don’t have much time to dwell on the result though, as Arsenal heads to Goodison Park for a Premier League match on Saturday. Before we look ahead to our predictions for that match though, let’s take a quick look back at our Leicester predictions.

Six of us correctly predicted that Leicester would win the match, though none by the proper score, via penalties. None of us had James Maddison opening the scoring, nor Leighton Baines coming away with man of the match honors.

With the results from this match (and a couple of retroactive corrections from previous weeks), we have the following standings in our prediction league.

Rachel holds a one-point lead on me at the top of the table, with Matthew C. and Tom still within striking distance four points off the pace.

With Everton facing Arsenal this weekend, our writers have an interesting opportunity to pick up some points. The match is a strange one — two teams with interim managers that have already picked their permanent replacements; two teams who have underperformed massively this season; one team that seems like it might be starting to turn it around, with the other only continuing to tank.

It, perhaps then, should not come as a surprise that our writers are actually relatively confident.

None of our writers picked Arsenal to win. We’re pretty much evenly split between an Everton win (7) and a draw (6)

Only three players received first goalscorer votes this week — Dominic Calvert-Lewin (6), Richarlison (4), and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (2) — though Zach’s 0-0 prediction leaves him with no opening scorer.

There’s only slightly more variety in the man of the match voting, where Richarlison (5) and Calvert-Lewin (4) again lead the way. Yerry Mina (2), Mason Holgate (1), and Jordan Pickford (1) were the other vote-getters.