We are approaching the halfway point of the Premier League Darts event as the competition heads to Nottingham for night seven on Thursday evening and with the league table beginning to take significant another big session of darts awaits us.
Michael van Gerwen looks to be skipping clear of the field but in behind him things are getting very competitive and with more points and another £10,000 up for grabs here we should be in for some excellent action.
Dimitri Van den Bergh vs Nathan Aspinall
The opening match of the night sees two men very much prominent in the race for the top four meeting when Dimitri Van den Bergh takes on Nathan Aspinall for the second time this season after they met four weeks ago.
Van den Bergh won that match 6-1 with a 103.63 average in one of the performances of the campaign so far. He has lost three of his last four in the Premier League though with the win coming over a Chris Dobey whose form looks to have left him recently. Aspinall is ahead of Van den Bergh in the table so he is having a better season of the two and that is the case away from the Premier League too where Aspinall has gone well on the floor and might have gone further than he did in the UK Open if he hadn’t drawn Michael van Gerwen in the quarter final. Van den Bergh has a very good head to head record against Aspinall but his last two Premier League displays have been ordinary and he lost in the second Players Championship event over the weekend with an 82 average. The most consistent Aspinall feels like a good price at even money.
Jonny Clayton vs Gerwyn Price
The second quarter final of the night sees the two Welsh players battling it out in a big game given the state of the league table as Jonny Clayton takes on a Gerwyn Price who begins the evening in fourth spot but just a point ahead of his World Cup colleague.
Clayton made a disastrous start to the tournament but has been coming good the longer the event has gone on. Price is going in the opposite direction. He won the second night on home soil but has only picked up wins on one other evening, losing in the quarter final on four occasions. Both men had mixed weekends on the Players Championship scene so as ever with a Price match the outcome might be assisted by the crowd. If Clayton stays on an even keel and starts well I would fancy him to win but I hate getting involved in matches between friends because there’s so much more going on in them.
Peter Wright vs Michael van Gerwen
It is bottom against top in the Premier League in the third quarter final in Nottingham as Peter Wright takes on Michael van Gerwen in a clash we saw last week and are highly likely to see in the quarter final again next week.
Given that Wright has been out of form this season the fact he chose not to go to the Players Championship events over the weekend might not help his cause here. We know why he didn’t go and that is understandable but he is giving a competitive advantage to the field. Van Gerwen didn’t have the best weekend there but he has won the last three Premier League evenings and is blazing a trail at the top of the table. We don’t know what Wright will turn up so it is hard to go against van Gerwen here but the odds fully reflect him as the likely winner so I’ll sit this one out.
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Chris Dobey vs Michael Smith
The last of the quarter finals sees the winner of the opening night of the competition in Chris Dobey going up against the world champion Michael Smith who has made his way up to second in the table heading to Nottingham.
Dobey heads to Nottingham having lost his last four matches in all competitions. This is week seven of the Premier League and the only points he has on his tally came in the opening night so there is a case to say he is finding the going at the top level a bit tough. In saying that, his last two losses came with 100+ averages and if he keeps performing to those levels he’ll find the winning enclosure again at some point. Smith is going very well in the Premier League and made the final last week but he can be guilty of missing a few doubles and at 1/2 he’s plenty short enough to sit and watch. You could perhaps double him up with MVG for an even money double but this isn’t really the tournament for that.
Night 7 Preview
Whenever Michael van Gerwen and Michael Smith are in the same half of the draw there is a feeling that we need to get involved in the weekly outright market because they are the two standout players and so you can get a price on the four in the other half to come through. Then it is just a case of picking which player and while Gerwyn Price would be the pick of the four players, we know the crowd is going to get involved which is a negative. It might be that Jonny Clayton is the one to take advantage of that.
Clayton is slowly getting himself into contention in this tournament and while I don’t really want to back him in a battle of friends in the quarter final, if he comes through that, whether assisted by the crowd or not, then I certainly would back him to come through a semi-final against either Aspinall or Van den Bergh. He would probably need his best in the final but the two Michaels might have a bit of a ding dong against each other which might help Clayton. At 11/1 I’ll see if he can win the evening.
Tips
Back N.Aspinall to beat D.Van den Bergh for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with BetVictor
Back J.Clayton to win Night 7 for a 1/10 stake at 12.00 with BetVictor
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