Everton at Chelsea: Writer Prediction League

When the Premier League fixture list was published earlier this summer, one of the biggest talking points was Everton’s brutal start to the schedule. The Toffees are right in the thick of that tough stretch, with a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge following their match last week against at Manchester City.

The RBM staff wasn’t particularly confident in Everton’s ability to get a result against Pep Guardiola’s side, but we were pleasantly surprised with the Toffees’ performance, and the optimistic among us were rewarded.

Our predictions from that match are below, with correct picks in bold.

Callum and Sean were our big winners last week — both correctly predicted a 1-1 draw. Tom also picked up 2 points for correctly predicting a draw, albeit by the wrong scoreline.

Those points give us a Week 2 table that looks like the following.

Despite the result against Manchester City, RBM’s writers don’t appear to be any more optimistic against Chelsea this week -- perhaps a factor of Morgan Schneiderlin’s suspension and mounting injury troubles.

Our picks for the match are below.

Tom is the true optimist of the group, picking a 2-1 Everton victory. Callum, Matt, and Tyler see Everton getting another road point. The rest of us have Chelsea taking all three points.

Despite our overall lack of confidence in Everton, four writers have predicted that Wayne Rooney will continue the pattern of the first two Premier League matches of the season and score the first goal of the game. Three writers selected Alvaro Morata to get on the board first, with Willian and Pedro each getting two votes. Callum was alone in selecting Michael Keane.

Keane did receive two man of the match votes, but Idrissa Gana Gueye ran away with the category, securing four selections. Jordan Pickford also received three, with Gylfi Sigurdsson, Tom Davies, and Muhamed Besic also getting a vote.