Everton v. Leicester City, at Arsenal: Writer Prediction League

We all spent this weekend away from Everton Football Club, and maybe that was a good thing.

Everton responded to its 4-0 annihilation at the hands of Tottenham Hotspur with an uninspiring 1-1 home draw against West Bromwich Albion — one that required another act of late heroics by Oumar Niasse.

So, it didn’t exactly feel like a great loss to be without the Toffees this weekend, though they now head into a difficult week of Premier League football. Wednesday, the Toffees host in-form Leicester City at Goodison Park, ahead of a Saturday trip to the Emirates to face Arsenal.

Before we look ahead to those two matches, let’s quickly (and as painlessly as possible) take a look back at the West Brom match and our laughably poor picks for it.

We all picked Everton to win (traditionally a bad sign for the Toffees chances), so no one got any points based on the outcome of the match. No one had Jay Rodriguez scoring the opener either, so that’s another null output.

Four writers did have Theo Walcott as Everton’s man of the match, and received one point for their correct prediction.

The low point output for the week left us with little change in the prediction league standings.

Calvin’s point tied him atop the table with Mike, while Brian F. continues to linger just close enough to the top to keep things interesting. The rest of us are floating around mid-table or below, hoping just to be the best of the rest — the true Everton way.

This week, Everton faces two clubs ahead of it in the Premier League table — Leicester City and Arsenal. Only eight points separate those two clubs in the table, but our writers seem to value that gap highly (as well as the fact that Everton hosts LCFC but travels to London to face Arsenal) — check out the discrepancy in predictions.

Our Leicester City predictions are among the most tightly contested I’ve seen. Four predicted draws, three an Everton victory, and three a Leicester victory — with none predicting a margin of victory greater than one.

The Arsenal predictions, on the other hand, are about as uniform as possible. All but one of us picked an Arsenal victory, with only Chris foreseeing a draw. The majority of us have the Toffees losing by multiple goals.

My favorite pick of the week is easily Tom’s first goalscorer for the Arsenal match — Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who isn’t even an Arsenal player yet!