We have reached week five of the Premier League Darts season where the eight players on show make their way to Brighton on Thursday to look for more points in the overall table and a shot at the £10,000 that is up for grabs on the evening.
Luke Humphries claimed that last week with another dazzling set of results and he will be looking to extend his lead at the top of the table but this has the look of a really competitive night of darts for us to get stuck into.
Gerwyn Price vs Michael van Gerwen
The pick of the quarter finals on Thursday evening might just be the first of them as Gerwyn Price goes up against the former champion Michael van Gerwen for a spot in the nightly semi-final in a clash which could quite easily go either way.
I think it is fair to say that neither of these men had the UK Open that they were looking for at the weekend so they will be keen to make up for that here. Price has already won one of the nights this season is yet to go past the semi-final of a week and lost in the quarter final to Rob Cross last week. Van Gerwen doesn’t look comfortable to me at the minute. He only just because Dirk van Duijvenbode at the UK Open then lost surprisingly to Robert Owen. I think the Price defeat by Connor Scutt is the less problematic of the losses but he is also a little up and down for my liking having won week three of the Premier League and then lost in the quarter final last week with a below 90 average. I’m comfortable leaving this one alone.
Luke Littler vs Chris Dobey
The second quarter final will see the newly crowned UK Open winner Luke Littler looking to continue his fantastic beginning to 2025 when he takes on a Chris Dobey who fell early in Minehead and who could do with some Premier League points here.
Littler was in imperious form last weekend, especially on the final day of the tournament and it would be a huge surprise if he comes down too far from that so Dobey is going to need to be at his very best to get the better of the world champion. This will be the first meeting between the two in the Premier League but they have met three times in total, all last year, and Littler leads 2-1. Their only meeting on the stage was at the World Series Finals where Littler won 10-7 in the quarter final but Dobey averaged 100.17 in that match over 17 legs and that gives me my angle in here. I expect this to be full of 180s, big scoring and everything else that a Littler match provides so Dobey to average over 95.5 looks a good thing to me. He covered it over 17 legs in that match in September and won’t need to play as well for as long here. I referenced last week how every average is inflated for the Littler opponent because he doesn’t miss many doubles to allow the opponent to miss many and we saw that last week when James Wade in the final was the only man who threw an average of under 95.5 against Littler and he afterwards admitted that the rigours of the day had left him with nothing left to give. The opponents of Littler in PL quarter finals so far have been 105.91, 99.96, 102.64 and 104.89. I expect Dobey to be the fifth player to cover 95.5 against him.
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Rob Cross vs Luke Humphries
The third of the quarter finals takes us into the bottom half of the draw on the evening when the local man Rob Cross takes on the early runaway leader in the Premier League table in the form of the world number one Luke Humphries.
When you look at this quarter final on paper you could make the case for it being something of a mismatch but Cross actually has a decent record against Humphries. Cross has won six of their last nine meetings and he only went down to a rampant Humphries in a deciding leg in the semi-final in Exeter last week. All of those nine matches were on a stage too so the former world champion Cross clearly raises his game against Humphries on the big occasion. The world number one had an up and down UK Open last week. He was sublime on the Saturday but either side of that he trailed Beau Greaves beyond 11 legs of their match and lost to James Wade when doubles were an issue in both matches. It wouldn’t take many missed doubles here to have Cross competitive in this one but after seeing him lose in a deciding leg where he had the throw last week, I’d prefer to play Cross to cover the 2.5 leg handicap rather than chance my arm on him winning.
Stephen Bunting vs Nathan Aspinall
The last of the quarter finals offers up a huge opportunity for the two men involved as Stephen Bunting takes on Nathan Aspinall with both players knowing they have to take advantage when they don’t face any of the big three in the quarter final.
Bunting is in desperate need of some points because he is yet to win a match in four goes this season and is already cut adrift at the bottom of the table. The damning statistic is that Bunting has only had 33 darts at a double in those four matches so he has been outplayed for the most part. That has to change here you would feel but Aspinall is going about his work nicely at the minute. He has reached a final and a semi-final of the campaign but he has the lowest tournament average of the eight men involved. Aspinall has started ploughing in the 180s in the last week or two though and I am tempted by over 3.5 180s from his tungsten here. He has covered it in four of his last five Premier League matches and scored well at the UK Open last weekend too but matches between these pair haven’t always caught fire in the past in terms of scoring and that might be because both miss doubles and make each other a little edgy. There are two bets I prefer elsewhere so I’ll leave that 180 bet alone but I might dabble if the two other bets have won.
Night 5 Betting
There are a few bets that I liked the look of over the course of the night including 180s and checkouts and things but the draw might not quite be competitive enough for them to land. I do still like the chances of over 43.5 180s on the night because even if you took half of the 180s in that monster match between Luke Littler and Stephen Bunting last week you would still have seen 48 in the session. I just wonder if after the exerts of the weekend whether Littler has it in him to go all the way which would probably be needed for that over to land.
I will have a small play in the night outright market though because Rob Cross looks a huge price to me at 20/1. I mentioned above how he has a winning record over Luke Humphries and how there was a vulnerability to the world number one last week and if Cross can get the better of him he would be favourite regardless of who he faces in the semi-final. He might have it tougher in the final but the 6/1+ place money would be in the bag by that point so I can’t ignore a small dabble on that 20/1.
Tips
Back C.Dobey – Over 95.5 average vs L.Littler for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Betway
Back R.Cross (+2.5 legs) to beat L.Humphries for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with William Hill
Back him here:
Back R.Cross to win Night 5 (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 21.00 with Betway (1/3 1-2)
