Everton at Atalanta, Manchester United: Writer Prediction League

The Royal Blue Mersey writer prediction league is about to get a whole lot more interesting, as Everton begins participating in the Europa League group stage. More matches means more chances for our writers to pick up points — or more likely to make themselves look foolish.

Speaking of looking foolish, let’s briefly look back on last week’s predictions against Tottenham Hotspur. Eight of our writers predicted Everton would get at least a point at Goodison Park on Sunday...which did not work out well for them.

Those picks are below, with correct guesses in bold.

Six writers were rewarded for picking the obvious first goal scorer, Harry Kane, while another four writers earned two points for predicting a Spurs win. No one correctly predicted the extent of the loss, though.

Though it is still very early in the season, a few writers have already acquitted themselves very nicely in the prediction league, as the standings below indicate.

Last year, Calvin won the prediction league with 70 points from 35 weeks of predictions — an average of 2 points per week. Right now, both Mike and Sean are above that two-per-week threshold, and in good shape to stay at the top of the table if they can keep that pace up.

They do face a new challenge this week though, as Everton travels to Atalanta and Manchester United. I suspect that the Europa League matches will be tough for us to predict this season — we know less about those opponents than Premier League teams, and squad rotation makes it difficult to accurately guess opening goalscorers and the Everton man of the match!

Suffice it to say that any writer who masters Europa League predictions may well win the entire league this season, at least if Everton makes a run into the knockout round.

Our picks for the first Europa League group stage match of the season are below.

Atalanta has gotten off to a rough start to its Serie A season — losing to Roma and Napoli to start the season, before narrowly defeating Sassuolo last weekend. Our predictions are relatively positive as a result.

Only Calvin predicted an Atalanta victory, with the other picks pretty evenly split between an Everton win and a draw.

There are two interesting things to note here.

First, Mike has predicted the first 0-0 draw on record in the prediction league. If he’s right, he’ll automatically lock up five points (two for correct result, two for correct score, one for correct first goalscorer). It’s a bold move, but one that could see him create some serious early-season separation at the top of the table if he’s right.

Second, our first goalscorer and Everton man of the match predictions pull from a wide variety of attacking Everton players — Ademola Lookman, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Davy Klaassen, Wayne Rooney, and Sandro Ramirez. The reality is that, at most, only four of these six players will start on Thursday, meaning that we’ll have some unhappy writers when lineups are announced!

The Manchester United predictions are significantly less interesting because the outcome of that match feels substantially more predetermined.

10 of 12 writers predict Romelu Lukaku will open the scoring — with the other two also predicting United to get on the board first. 10 of 12 writers also have United winning the match, with only two predicting a draw, and none an Everton win.

Even the final score predictions are gloomy — of the 10 writers who predicted an Everton defeat, only one thinks the Toffees will lose by only one goal. Matt and Chris have even predicted an utter annihilation at Old Trafford, picking 3-0 and 4-0 final scores, respectively.