Everton at Liverpool: Writer Prediction League

Everton sits in a strange place entering this week.

The Toffees are coming off two comfortable league wins last week (we’re continuing to pretend Thursday’s Europa League match never even existed), and look to be moving in the right direction under Sam Allardyce. For the first time in awhile, there’s reasonable, though tempered, optimism surrounding Everton.

There’s one small problem though — the Toffees are coming up against a giant red buzzsaw this week. Liverpool has 15 goals in its last three matches, conceding only one, sitting fourth in the Premier League, and winning Champions League Group E.

Any good feelings scrounged up over the course of the past week could easily be set aflame on Sunday.

But first, let’s take one last look back at those good feelings, reviewing our picks from the victories against West Ham United and Huddersfield Town.

Everton’s overwhelming success last week caught the majority of us off guard, which led to a pretty low-scoring week in the prediction league. Irritatingly, the only writer to pick Everton to win both matches was Calvin, whose lead in the league only continues to grow.

It’s turning into a runaway at the top of the table, as Mike and Calvin have all but made it a two-horse race.

That brings us to our Liverpool predictions this week, which are overwhelmingly negative.

As a group, the RBM staff is largely encouraged by Everton’s recent performance, but believe this edition of the Merseyside Derby comes too soon and against a Liverpool side too hot for Blues to have any real optimism heading into the match.

Tom is the only writer to predict an Everton victory, with Brian L. and Tyler both predicting draws (that would undoubtedly feel like wins!)

On the other end of the spectrum, Calvin predicts the heftiest defeat of the group — 5-1 — while four others have the Toffees losing by three goals.

Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah are the most popular choices for opening goalscorer, while Gylfi Sigurdsson has the only Everton votes. Jordan Pickford is the most popular Everton MOTM option, an indication that the writers think he’ll be getting a lot of work (and that the rest of the team will look poor!)