The second match of the evening sees four-time Premier League Darts Champion Phil Taylor take on world number four Mervyn King for a place in Sunday’s final.
Phil Taylor v Mervyn King
Despite being one of the early pacesetters in this year’s league stage, Mervyn King stumbled over the line to make the playoffs courtesy of leg difference over Ronnie Baxter. He’s up against it again tonight as 1/3 tournament favourite Phil Taylor stands in the way of ‘The King’ (28/1 for the outright) reaching successive Premier League finals. It’s worth remembering that he made relatively light work of exactly the same situation this time last year where he dispatched Taylor 10-6 to stop ‘The Power’ claiming a complete clean sweep of a major titles in 2009 and he is 9/1 to do so again. Unfortunately for King, he is currently not performing at that same level having only averaged 91.07 over his last five Premier League fixtures; his highest being 94.15 in week 9 so it is with great delight that the bookmakers go 9/10 on the East Anglian yet again averaging under 95.5. Recent weeks have been marred by the former BDO World finalist getting too involved with the crowd and Taylor will look to use this to his advantage whenever possible as well as having that nagging act of revenge firmly in his mindset.
By his own admission, Taylor is below his best and is openly gearing up for the busy second half of the calendar year where the big major ranking tournaments commence. The bad news for the rest of tonight’s hopefuls is that a below-par Taylor is still in more than adequate form to take a fifth Premier League title in its six years of existence. His five-weekly average stands at 100.32 and his Pro Tour form is head and shoulders above anyone else’s having not failed to progress to at the least the semi final stage of every competition since October (King has reached just one quarter final in his last 14 tournaments).
Whilst there is little value in touching the 1/12 (William Hill) about Taylor progressing to the final, there is interest in the total 180s line. Both men have been relatively short on landing all three in the lipstick with ‘The Power’ averaging a 180s every 2.85 legs in the previous five weeks compared to King’s 2.25. The spread markets suggest that we can expect this match to go somewhere between 11 and 12 legs and should the pair continue their five week 180 scoring rate, we would be right to expect just over 5 180s in this match. With the line generally set at under/over 6.5 legs, this gives us a bit of leeway for the play on the unders. The highest checkout score is also something that could be a little out of line. Again, using the previous five weeks as a barometer, the pair have managed to go over 121.5 on just three occasions out of ten between them (130, 125 & 123) with Taylor’s highest checkout average in this period standing at 104.6 compared to King’s 81.6. Bearing in mind that this match is not expected to go anywhere near the maximum 15 legs, the 5/6 (Skybet & Blue Square) may be worth looking at, given the limited opportunities available to scupper the selection.
Verdict
Mervyn King to average under 95.5 at 9/10 (Various)
Match to produce under 6.5 180s at 10/11 (Skybet)
Match highest checkout to be below 121.5 at 5/6 (Skybet)
