Mansfield Town vs Macclesfield FC
Our model puts a Mansfield Town win at 67.5% in this FA Cup fixture — the clearest call on this fixture. Expected goals run 2.4 to 0.99.
What this probability has been worth
A number is worth what it has been worth. Across 2,454 predictions published before kick-off and scored against the result afterwards, the calls we priced between 65% and 75% came in 70% of the time — 237 fixtures in that band. The model claimed 69.4%, so the two are within 0.7 points of each other. In this range the stated probability has meant roughly what it says.
Evenly rated
There is almost nothing between these two on rating — 1518 against 1516, a gap of 2 points. Fixtures this evenly matched are where a model has least to say: the probabilities below are honest, but they are close to a coin weighted only slightly.
Mansfield Town are hard to beat
Mansfield Town have gone 8 matches without losing, though without stringing wins together. That pattern tends to push draw probability up more than it pushes a win probability.
A high-scoring home side
One model here does nothing but estimate how likely the home side is to score four goals or more, and on this fixture it reads 69.7%. Across our settled fixtures that happens about 8% of the time, so this is well above ordinary. It says nothing about who wins — a side can score four and still be caught — but a match where one team is expected to run up a total is one where the scoreline is much harder to call than the result.