Everton vs Watford: Writer Prediction League

The Everton season is off to a mixed start, with the season opener against Crystal Palace showcasing some reasonable attacking football, but also an injury to a key player and a needless red card. Optimism blending with pain and unnecessary suffering — just another day at Everton.

Next, we look ahead to the Toffees’ matchup against Javi Gracia and Watford FC — the club’s first match at Goodison Park this season. Watford lost 3-0 to Brighton and Hove Albion last week, so there’s reason for optimism heading into this one — but the situation in the center of Everton’s midfield could yet be troubling.

First, let’s review last week’s picks, before looking ahead to the Watford match.

Pete and Rachel were the big winners last week, with both predicting 0-0 draws and getting 5 points each — 1 for correctly predicting the opening scorer (none), 2 for the correct outcome (draw), and 2 for the correct final score.

Jordan Pickford was voted Everton MOTM by RBM readers, and none of our writers picked the keeper, so there are no points to be awarded there.

A few other writers picked a draw by a different scoreline and got two points as a result, giving us first-week standings that look like this.

Rachel finished a close second in last year’s league, so she’ll probably be feeling a touch of PTSD to wind up there after week 1 — even if it is only because the standings table has a secondary sort for alphabetical by name.

This week’s match against Watford gives the rest of our writers a chance to get on the board. It’s a bit of a tough match to predict — the Hornets were dreadful last week and remain quite suspect defensively, but Everton look likely to roll out a midfield duo of an ill-prepared Jean-Philippe Gbamin and often-underwhelming Tom Davies.

Which force will win out? Take a look.

We’ve got eight Everton victory predictions to go along with five draws — a second consecutive week in which none of us picked Everton to lose. Most of us expect a tight match, with only Pat and Tom picking a multi-goal victory for the Toffees.

Rachel has gone back to the well again, picking another 0-0 scoreline after it served her well last week. The most common draw prediction is 2-2, with three writers foreseeing a four-goal match. With the condition of Watford’s defense and Everton’s midfield, it might not be a bad guess.

The opening goal votes are quite scattered. Richarlison leads the way with three votes, but Moise Kean, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and Troy Deeney each got two votes. Gylfi Sigurdsson, Abdoulaye Doucoure, and Andre Gray each received one.

Belief in Richarlison carries over to the MOTM column, where he leads the way with three votes as well — though this time in a tie with Kean. The usual suspects like Lucas Digne and Sigurdsson are present here as well, with Gbamin and Davies also picking up potentially surprising votes.