AberdeenvsSt Johnstone

Aberdeen host St Johnstone at Pittodrie in round eight, a fixture the model rates as close to even. Note the vintages: Aberdeen's table figures come from the completed 2025-2026 season, while St Johnstone's come from four matches of 2026-2027. The headline split is 37% home, 24.2% draw, 38.8% away.

Aberdeen finished 2025-2026 eighth of 12 with 33 points from 33 games, scoring 33 and conceding 48. Their attack ranked 11th in the division, their defence sixth. The home numbers are materially stronger: a 45% win rate across their last 20 at Pittodrie, averaging 1.65 goals scored and 1.1 conceded.

St Johnstone sit eighth on four points from four games this season, with six scored and seven conceded, or 1.5 and 1.75 per game. Their three away matches have yielded no win, one draw and two defeats, at 0.67 scored and 1.33 conceded. Recent form reads DLWDL.

There are no prior meetings between the clubs on record. With no historical sample at all, the head-to-head carries no weight here; the projection rests entirely on the season aggregates and the model. That is an unusually clean slate for a preview.

Aberdeen's home record is the sharpest split in the data: 45% wins and 1.65 goals per home game against a 27.3% overall win rate and 1.0 scored per game across the season. St Johnstone's away figures, 0.67 scored and no wins in three, sit below their overall 1.5. Three matches is a thin base for that away read.

Both sides last played on 19 September, so neither arrives on a short turnaround. Both have faced demanding recent schedules, with Aberdeen's last five opponents averaging rank 5 and St Johnstone's 4.8. The bigger caveat is sample size and vintage: one team's numbers cover a full season, the other's just four matches.

The Poisson model reports high confidence in a near-even contest — St Johnstone 38.8%, Aberdeen 37%, draw 24.2% — making an away win the single most likely outcome by under two percentage points. Expected goals are 1.49 to 1.53, a projected 1-1, with the likeliest exact scorelines 1-1 (11.1%), 1-2 (8.5%) and 2-1 (8.3%). Combined goals project to about 3.02, with 2+ at 80.4% and 3+ at 58.2%, and a 60.7% chance each side scores at least once. Margins cluster inside one goal: away by one 19.9%, home by one 19.4%.

The data points to a tight, moderately high-scoring game with a marginal away edge, and a 1-1 projection sits comfortably inside that. The away call is the weakest kind of favourite: 1.8 percentage points separate the two win outcomes. Aberdeen's home record, nine wins from 20 with 1.65 goals per game, is the clearest reason to expect the model to miss.