Everton vs Sunderland, Bournemouth: Writer Prediction League

Everton had a very bad week last week, and things on Merseyside are pretty bleak at the moment. The thrashing at the hands of Atalanta gave way to a decent performance but miserable result at Manchester United — and perhaps the less said about those two matches going forward, the better.

We do have to quickly review our predictions from those matches though, before we can look ahead to the RBM staff’s predictions for this week’s matches against Sunderland and Bournemouth.

Let’s start with the Atalanta match, which was as depressing for us as it was for the club itself.

Only Calvin predicted that Atalanta would win the match — though by a less painful scoreline than we saw in reality. No one picked the correct opening goalscorer, nor Maarten Stekelenburg as the Everton man of the match (unsurprisingly), so nobody else got points.

The Manchester United match brought us a little more success.

All but Callum and Zach picked up two points for correctly predicting a United victory, and Chris even correctly guessed it would be a 4-0 massacre.

No one had Antonio Valencia scoring the opening goal, and no one picked Tom Davies to be voted the RBM man of the match, so no additional points to be given there.

Five weeks into the season, our prediction league standings look like this.

Mike retained his lead atop the table, but Sean and Calvin are close behind him. Zach is bringing up the rear with four points, the price of his optimism during last week.

That’s more than enough about last week though — let’s take a look ahead at what should be a more straightforward week for the Toffees.

First up is Sunderland in the Coca-Cola Worthington Carling Capital One EFL Carabao Cup. The Black Cats are struggling in the Championship thus far this season, and shouldn’t present too much of a challenge to Everton, at least in theory. Our picks are quite optimistic as a result.

Everyone picked Everton to win this match — 9 of 12 writers picked the Toffees to win by multiple goals, in fact — but there are some absolutely fascinating picks in the first goalscorer and Everton man of the match categories.

Matt has Sunderland’s Lynden Gooch scoring the opening goal. Gooch’s name should be familiar to American readers, as he’s earned two caps with the United States national team. Gooch scored the match-winner in the 80th minute of Sunderland’s second round Carabao Cup match against Carlisle United in August.

Brian F. has long-lost Jonjoe Kenny winning the Everton man of the match voting — a bold move given that the young right-back has yet to appear for the senior team this season.

Without a doubt though, our most interesting picks this week come from Tom. This bold, brave, or perhaps idiotic fellow picked even longer-lost Oumar Niasse to score Everton’s opening goal and win the man of the match voting. If Tom is right on this one, I may permanently shut down the league and name him eternal champion.

The weekend’s match against Bournemouth brings the club back to the Premier League and more predictable lineup choices, and therefore less interesting predictions as well.

10 of 12 writers have Everton winning the match, with Callum and Chris both predicting draws. Half of our writers picked Wayne Rooney to get the opening goal (for whatever reason), with Gylfi Sigurdsson and Josh King also receiving two votes each.

The man of the match predictions are also dominated by Rooney, who received four votes, as did Sigurdsson. Tom Davies, Idrissa Gana Gueye, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin also got some love.