Midweek Predictions: Crouchy to Pull Out the Rope?

World Cup qualification games happening everywhere except Africa tomorrow, so I’ve chosen three games and predicted the scores.

Feel free to laugh at my feeble powers of prediction, but only if you’re brave enough to leave your own in the comments.

England vs Ukraine, April 1st, Wembley, 20:00

Think it’s fair to say England have injury problems. Fabio Capello had to sub the sub of a sub vs Slovakia on Saturday as Emile Heskey, Carlton Cole and Peter Crouch all got injured. Darren Bent was called up as a reinforcement only for him to need replacing with Gabby Agbonlahor. Crouchy is now fit enough to start though.

Ukraine lost in-form Artem Kravet to a nasty sounding muscle tear in his hip, but the main goal threat will likely be the pony-tailed poacher Andriy Voronin. He’s on loan at Hertha and scoring Bundesliga goals for fun, but will want to remind Liverpool why they signed him in the first place.

Meanwhile I’m sure Andriy Shevchenko would love to remind all of England that he is not as useless as those Chelsea performances led everyone to believe.

Prediction: Have to admit I’m a little biased, but I’m predicting a respectable 1-0 win for England.

Odds: England 2-5, Draw 10-3, Ukraine 15-2
1-0 England win: 9-2
Peter Crouch to score first: 5-1
Peter Crouch hat-trick: 33-1
Andriy Shevchenko to score first: 9-1
The sub of an England sub to be subbed (like on Saturday): 200-1
More odds at PaddyPower

Bonus Prediction: If Peter Crouch does score a hat-trick, he’ll “pull out the rope”. If Shevchenko scores, Wembley will go very very quiet. Also, don’t rule out England unveiling another new home shirt, since it was so much fun the last time.

USA vs Trindidad & Tobago, April 1st, Nashville, 18:57 (apparently)

Impressive comeback from the USA in El Salvador over the weekend, where Bob Bradley’s men overcame a two goal deficit and some unconvincing El Salvadorian injuries to get out of there with a 2-2 draw and a point. But it wasn’t the best of performances against a team they really should have beaten.

Meanwhile Trinidad & Tobago are off to a slow start with two draws against El Salvador and Honduras. So they need a big performance if they want to get back to the World Cup.

Prediction: Things don’t seem to be going all that well with T&T, so I’m backing the USA to get a convincing 3-1 win.

Odds: USA 1-4, Draw, T&T 9-1
3-1 USA win: 10-1
More odds at PaddyPower

Bonus Prediction: Landon Donavon’s hairline to visibly recede during the 90 minutes.

Brazil vs Peru, April 1st, Porto Alegre, 22:10

It’s still not quite happening for Brazil. Despite the many many talents at Dunga’s disposal, they were lucky to get a 0-0 draw in Ecudaor over the weekend (apparently Ecudaor outshout the Seleção 22-8).

But this game may offer some relief. Peru are bottom of CONMEBOL qualifying, and word is that Brazil have some guy named Kaka available again after injury…

Prediction: Brazil to win 2-0.

Odds: Brazil 1-7, Draw 6-1, Peru 15-1
3-0 to Brazil: 5-1
Kaka to score first goal: 9-2
More odds at Paddy Power

Time to check in on last week’s predictions.

Here’s what I went with:
Argentina 3-0 Venezuela
Lithuania 1-1 France
Mexico 1-0 Costa Rica

And here’s what happened:
Argentina 4-0 Venezuela
Lithuania 0-1 France
Mexico 2-0 Costa Rica

So I get four points. One each for correctly predicting Argentina and Mexico victories, one for predicting Venezuela nil, one for predicting Costa Rica nil.

Medals and congrats go to:

Gold
Ian: 6 pts

Silver
John, Weston: 5 points

Bronze
Toby, Ranjeet, Tom and Jem: 4 points

This week there’s a bonus point on offer for naming a goalscorer. You pick a player from each game, and if he scores you get a bonus point. From tomorrow’s three games I’m picking Crouch, Altidore and Kaka.

Here are the games again, let’s have your predictions.

England – Ukraine
USA – T&T
Brazil – Peru

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