Weekend Predictions: More March Madness for Martin O’Neill

By: Daryl | March 20th, 2009

Another week, another round of predictions. This week I’m picking Liverpool vs Villa, Roma vs Juventus and drifting across the Atlantic for Houston vs Columbus.

You ever tried predicting an MLS game before? This is a league where David Beckham makes a team worse and Darren Huckerby makes a team better.

My predictions are below, and please leave yours in the comments.

Liverpool vs Aston Villa, Sunday March 22, 16:00

You may or may not have heard, but Liverpool did quite well last week. It’s probably safe(ish) to say that Man Utd will bounce back against Fulham, which makes it all the more important for Liverpool to win this game.

Villa are winless in their last seven games, recently slipped out of the top four, and some fickle “fans” have even been booing their own team. Even worse, there’s a bizarre stat hanging over them: Apparently Martin O’Neill has never won a game with Aston Villa during the month of March.

Stats like that are usually more co-incidence than anything else (he’s only been in charge since August 2006), but….

Prediction: … I’m still going 1-0 Liverpool, just to be safe.

Odds:
Liverpool 1-2, Draw 3-1, Aston Villa 6-1
1-0 to Liverool: 9-2
Lucas first goalscorer: 20-1
More odds at PaddyPower

Bonus Prediction: The official Aston Villa calendar for 2010 will only have eleven months.

Roma vs Juventus, Saturday March 21, 20:30

Big big game for both teams. Juve still have a title fight in them, while Roma are after that fourth and final Champions League spot. And interesting team news from both camps.

Roma is the now predictable list of the sick and suspended, and I quote:

Roma captain Francesco Totti is likely to sit out again with a sore knee. The Giallorossi are also missing Rodrigo Taddei, Cicinho, Juan, Marco Cassetti and Simone Perrotta, while Daniele De Rossi, Marco Motta, David Pizarro and Souleymane Diamoutene are all suspended.

Juve have their own problems:

Amauri, Mauro Camoranesi, Mohamed Sissoko and Cristiano Zanetti are all out injured for Juve, while defender Giorgio Chiellini has returned after surgery to repair his broken nose.

But Claudio Ranieri still has enough options (including young Giovinco) to possibly start David Trezeguet on the bench (though the two have apparently made nice following Trezegol’s post-Champions League tantrum).

Prediction: Roma are at home, but they just don’t have enough first team players available to do anything but hope for the best. So I’m going with a 2-1 away win for Juve.

Odds:
Roma 17-10, Draw 19-10, Juventus 6-4
2-1 Juventus win: 8-1
More odds at PaddyPower

Bonus Prediction: Of all the teams in the entire world, Roma will be the happiest to see next weekend’s international break.

Houston Dynamo vs Columbus Crew, Saturday, March 21, 19:00

I’ve got nothing but good wishes for MLS, but damn them and their backwards fixture lists. Thanks to the American tradition of putting the away team first (Y @ X instead of X vs Y) it took me a good brow-furrowed five minutes to be sure exactly who was at home and who was away in this game. It’s Houston by the way.

Why’ve I picked this game? Well, it’s the first weekend of MLS 2009. And it’s the 2008 champions vs the 2007 (and six) champions. MLS is notoriously hard to predict (eg, the shiny new Seattle Sounders beating the quite-surprised New York Red Bulls 3-0 in the season opener yesterday) and this game is maybe the hardest of all. Houston have lost DeRo (gone home to Toronto) and Crew lost their coach (to Seattle). So who knows?

Prediction: It’s probably tougher to lose a successful coach than a star player, so I’m saying 2-0 home win for Houston.

Odds:
Houston 11-8, Draw 9-4, Columbus 8-5
Houston to win 2-0: 10-1
More MLS odds at PaddyPower

Bonus Prediction: A Houston fan will read this and want to write for Dynamo Offside.

Time for a look at last week’s predictions.

Here’s what I went with:
Man Utd 2-2 Liverpool
Celtic 2-2 Rangers (Celtic win on pens)
PSG 1-0 O’M

And here’s what actually happened:
Man Utd 1-4 Liverpool
Celtic 2-0 Rangers
PSG 1-3 O’M

So based on our new improved scoring system (one point for correct result and one bonus point for each correct number of goals) I score a grand total of zero points out of nine. A record low.

But congratulations to…

Gold
Alessio: 4 points (Liverpool win, Man Utd one goal, Celtic win, Rangers no goals)
Musab: 4 points (Celtic win, Celtic with two goals, Marseille win, PSG one goal)

Silver
Javier: 3 points (Liverpool win, Celtic win, Rangers no goals)
elle: 3 points (Celtic win, Rangers no goals, Marseille win)
Toby: 3 points (Celtic win, Celtic two goals, Marseille win)

Bronze
John: 2 points (Celtic win, Celtic two goals)
Ranjeet: 2 points (Liverpool win, Man Utd one goal)

So let’s have you predictions for this weekend’s games:
(now in handy cut and paste format)

Liverpool – Aston Villa
Roma – Juventus
Houston – Columbus