2024 Premier League Night 16 Preview & Tips – JP
2024 Premier League Night 16 Preview & Tips
Now, it is time for James Punt’s 2024 Premier League Night 16 preview.
Night 15
Finally, we reach Night 16. The last night of the league stage. You’ll miss it when it’s over. You might, I won’t.
Night 15 was another wipe out, down three points and leaving the running total +2.35 points.
Of our ante Post bets. The 2 points on Wright to finish last has already paid out a 1.34 point profit. Rob Cross not making the playoffs lost 1 point, and we have 2 points running on MVG to win the title @ 4.50. He is now 4.75, but you never know, at least he is in the mix.
One Match Matters
Tonight’s matches are largely meaningless, except for the BIG one, Aspinall vs. Smith. The winner of that will make the play offs and a chance to win the £275000 first prize. There is the playing order of the play offs to be decided, so the other matches are not totally irrelevant.
MVG is in third place, and as it stands will play the player who finishes second, currently Luke Humphries. Even if Van Gerwen wins the night, he cannot catch Humphries, but he could be overtaken by Smith or Aspinall.
The player finishing fourth plays the player in first, and barring miracles, that will be Luke Littler. All he has to is to beat Peter Wright and he is guaranteed to finish top. It is a case of Hobson’s Choice, who do you fancy? Humphries or Littler?
The Littler vs. Wright match is first up, and first and second place will be decided when Littler wins. MVG faces Cross in the last match of the night, so he will know by then what the situation is.
Luke Littler vs. Peter Wright
I read an interview with Peter Wright this week where he said that he wants one more year in the PL, to sign out in style. It was all a bit delusional.
He won’t be an automatic qualifier next year, unless he wins a major before now and the end of the year. As I said, he won’t be an automatic pick for next year. If he isn’t an automatic pick, why would he be invited? He finished last in 2023, he has finished last in 2024, winning just seven matches across 32 weeks of PL darts. Somebody else deserves the place.
This is a repeat of the match played last Thursday. Littler won that 6-1. Since then, he has played twice and lost twice, both seeing sub 90 averages. He lost last week’s semi-final 1-6 to MVG, and then lost 3-6 to Wessell Nijman in the Baltic Sea Darts Open.
Tough Schedule
That second match was no surprise. Littler was going to be hard pressed to play on Thursday night in Leeds, before making the trip to Kiel to play on Friday night, against a player with a big winning H2H record against him.
Littler was exhausted. He has learned the lesson that doing the PL one night, and the Euro Tour the next, is very tough, especially if he draws a good first round opponent.
I expect Littler to be fine tonight. He has had a few days off to rest up and recharge the batteries.
Snakebite Struggling
Peter Wright has lost seven of his last ten matches and six of his last seven have seen sub 93 averages. He says that it is the fault of his glasses. He has lost his last six PL matches in a row.
Littler has beaten Wright in both their previous matches, 6-5 and last weeks 6-1. It is hard to believe that Wright can win this and it is just a matter of the margin of victory for Littler. I was wrong last week when I thought Wright would get three legs or more, but he was hopeless.
Littler is the 1.14 favourite, Wright 6.00. I’ll do a full 360 on last week’s tip.
2024 Premier League Night 16 Tip: 1 point Under 8.5 legs @ 2.05 with Betfred
Nathan Aspinall vs. Michael Smith
I was surprised to see Nathan Aspinall turn up for last weekend’s Euro Tour event in Kiel. He had said that he wasn’t playing in anything other than the PL until it was finished.
He should have stuck to his original plan as he lost his first round match to Ritchie Edhouse. The Asp had the same problem as Littler, having to make the trip from Leeds to Kiel and pretty much get straight on the board, against an in-form player.
Aspinall lost 2-6, but at least he averaged 99. he has won five of his last ten matches but lost the last four in a row.
Michael Smith has not played Euro Tour since ET4 in early April, but he has played in the Players Championship events and he won PC 9, which was held in Germany, just over a week ago. He beat Aspinall in last week’s quarter final, before losing 1-6 to Luke Humphries in the semi. Neither performance was good. He has won eleven of his last thirteen matches.
Smith in Better Form
Smith comes into this in better form win wise, but Aspinall has been scoring well, just not finishing well. Six of his last ten have seen checkout rates of under 33%.
This looks to be a battle of nerves. It is a huge match, played over a first to six leg format. It is hard to predict who can keep it all together in that situation.
Last year, Aspinall needed to beat Jonny Clayton and then make the final to qualify. He beat Clayton, averaging 103, but lost the semi to the already qualified Gerwyn Price. The Asp had made the playoffs in his first two years in the PL. Smith has only made the play off twice in six previous PL appearances.
Their H2H record is 13-11 to Smith and he has that 6-3 from last week to draw on. Their record in best of eleven leg matches sees half over 9.5 legs and half under.
I find this this one too hard to get an angle on. You can back either player at 1.95, which sums it up perfectly. No bet.
2024 Premier League Night 16 Tip: No Bet
Luke Humphries vs. Gerwyn Price
Price turned up to play last week, said he was still not fully fit, had not been practising, lost 3-6 to MVG, averaging just 89.9. He withdrew from the Baltic Sea Darts Open, so he was just going through the motions to fulfil his contractual obligations. Will anything have changed in a week? Unlikely.
Luke Humphries missed a few events to have a bit of a rest and it seems to have worked. He won last week’s final, and reached the final in Kiel, hitting a nine darter in a 6-8 loss to Rob Cross. Humphries has won seven of his last ten matches and hit eight 98+ averages. He looks back to something close to his very best form.
Humphries is 3-1 against Price in 2024, 2-0 in the PL (6-2, 6-3) and he has won six of their last eight matches.
Humphries is the 1.50 favourite to win but I will take him to cover a -1.5 leg handicap.
2024 Premier League Night 16 Tip: 2 points Luke Humphries to win -1.5 legs @ 1.80 with Livescorebet
Michael van Gerwen vs. Rob Cross
Having been eliminated from the PL, Cross promptly went to Kiel and won the Baltic Sea Darts Open. He is free to just play darts now and it may have a positive effect. Cross has now won seven of his last ten and I expect to see his 2024 win rate start to improve quite rapidly from the current 53%. Scoring wise, they are few that can touch him for high scoring consistency.
Their H2H record is interesting. Cross has won their last three matches, 6-2, 6-2, 6-5, all in the PL. MVG has lost six of his last ten matches. In those ten, he has hit four ton plus averages, but six sub 94s. He is mostly playing pretty ordinary or poor darts. Cross is consistently hitting big averages.
Cross is the 2.20 outsider and that is just because MVG has a big reputation, it is not based on recent form otherwise Cross would be favourite. It is easy to pick Cross to win this.
2024 Premier League Night 16 Tip: 1 point Rob Cross to win @ 2.20 with Betvictor, BET365
I will round off the league stage with a rare nightly winner bet. Littler is the 3.00 favourite and he does have a simple first round win to start, but I will go for Rob Cross to finally land his first night win of the campaign.
He has made two of the last three finals and he will have an extra spring in his step after beating Humphries on Sunday to win on the Euro Tour. The odds are certainly big enough for a small bet.
