Golden Arrows lost 1-0 at AmaZulu on Saturday, which made it three league defeats in a row. Two of our fans, Siphamandla and Lwandle, called that scoreline exactly. The more common view on Prediz was 0-0, and the goal that separated the sides was the difference between two fans scoring well and five fans scoring nothing.
Now comes the hard bit of the calendar. SuperSport and the provider coverage have the Carling Knockout quarter-finals starting on Tuesday at Loftus Versfeld with Mamelodi Sundowns against Arrows, the fourth time the two have met this season. Flashscore notes that Sundowns put a 16-year unbeaten home record on the line in that one. The Carling Knockout is not a Prediz competition, so there are no points in it for our fans, but there is a cost: whatever Arrows have left in the legs on Wednesday night, they will have spent some of it in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Wednesday is the one that counts here. Arrows host Marumo Gallants at 19:30 in the Betway Premiership. Gallants are 15th on five points from nine, which makes this look like the week's gentlest fixture, right up until you remember what Gallants did on Friday. They beat Siwelele 3-2. Seven Prediz fans predicted that match and only one of them got the result right, with three of them going for a 0-1 Siwelele win. The bottom half of this league has not been reading the script.
Five fans have predicted Arrows against Gallants so far. That is a fixture sitting between a side that cannot win and a side that just did, with a cup tie wedged into the middle of it, and it is being treated as routine.
The honest read is that Arrows are the better team on points and position, and that neither of those things has helped much lately. If you are predicting Wednesday, decide first whether Tuesday at Loftus leaves Arrows flat. A tired home side against opponents who have just scored three is how 1-1 happens, and 1-1 is the sort of scoreline that quietly separates a leaderboard.