Lauantaivakio

Seven from thirteen, and the draw sign is the whole story.

Six matches finished level. Four of them were covered — Burnley and Derby, Portsmouth and Blackburn, Oxford and Cambridge, Sheffield Wednesday and Stockport were all backed to include a stalemate as one of two live outcomes, and all four came in exactly that way. The other two draws fell on the fixtures where a winner was backed outright instead. Birmingham 2 Middlesbrough 2 ruled a draw out entirely; QPR 2 Preston 2 backed QPR alone. Both were wrong for the same reason on the same afternoon.

That is the pattern for the round's outright calls generally. Five matches were played as a single side rather than a hedge, and only one of them landed — Everton at home to Ipswich. The other four wanted a specific side to win and got the alternative. Nottingham Forest was the most confident single of the round and lost at home to Coventry. Hull did not win at Newcastle. Southampton did not win at Wrexham. QPR did not beat Preston. Four losses from four singles that carried real risk, against six hits from eight doubles. The hedge did its job again this week. The outright call mostly did not.

The one double that missed without a draw involved deserves its own line. Brighton hosted Arsenal and the coupon ruled out a Brighton win completely — not a close call, a full exclusion — and Brighton won by three. Arsenal have not looked like the league's best side in a month, and this was the round saying so in writing before kickoff. It was also entirely wrong, and by the widest margin of anything on the coupon.

Elsewhere the round did what it was built to do. Lincoln's away form and Swansea's away form were read correctly against each other. Bradford's win at Luton was backed as one of two live outcomes and duly arrived. Sheffield Wednesday and Stockport being hard to separate turned out to mean exactly what it usually means in League One — nobody separated them.

Six draws in thirteen matches is a heavy week for the middle outcome, and the round's whole record turns on how it was handled: covered four times out of six, missed the other two by trying to pick a winner instead. That is not a new lesson. It is the same one repeating with the scoreline attached.