Kevin Nisbet and Killian Phillips made a messy opening round look more readable than it was

The first round did not flatter caution. Two correct calls were enough to keep the ledger respectable, but the misses were loud: a home win that became an away win, a draw that turned into a late Motherwell steal, and a couple of scorelines that looked tidy only until the actual scorers arrived. The model had the right instinct in places. It just kept missing the man who would actually finish the job.

ST Johnstone-Kilmarnock was the one call that landed for the right reason

The best hit was not just that Fipster backed ST Johnstone to win. It was that the match unfolded exactly as a narrow, open game with enough scoring chances at both ends to make a home edge matter. The 4-3 finish did not come from some grand tactical revelation; it came from the sort of contest where one extra moment, or one extra mistake, decides everything. That is why this call held up. The model had read it as a tight home edge rather than a comfortable stroll, and that part of the read was sound even if nobody would have enjoyed watching it with their hands unclenched.

Celtic-Dundee is where the numbers got too polite

The miss at Celtic was more revealing than any of the others. Fipster leaned toward a draw, and that meant it over-valued balance where Celtic eventually found just enough control to win 1-0 through Erik Nygren. The issue was not that Dundee were hopelessly outclassed; it was that the model treated parity as more likely than a single decisive moment from a player it had not flagged at all. Erik Nygren’s goal, set up by Kieran Tierney, is exactly the sort of outcome that punishes an over-civilised forecast. One clean finish, one assist, and no room left for a neat little 1-1.

The round belonged to names Fipster never called out beforehand

That was the awkward thread running through most of the weekend. Kevin Nisbet scored twice for Aberdeen after Fipster had not named him pre-match. Killian Phillips did likewise for ST Mirren. Lukas Fadinger gave Motherwell their first goal in Hibernian’s defeat, Martin Boyle answered from the spot for Hibernian, and Ibrahim Said finished Motherwell’s job late on. Greg Kiltie scored for Kilmarnock in that wild 4-3 game, while Oisin McEntee and Cheick Diabate also turned up with goals nobody had pencilled in before kick-off. In other words: the round was decided less by broad team shape than by individual interventions from players outside Fipster’s pre-match shortlist.

That matters because it shows where early-season modelling can be too tidy. The scorelines were often close enough to look plausible in advance, but several matches were settled by scorers who were simply not in view before they happened. When Fipster did get close, as with ST Johnstone-Kilmarnock or Aberdeen’s eventual win over Heart Of Midlothian, it still needed help from late-game chaos rather than clean scorer identification. That is not fatal this early in the season; it is just a reminder that opening rounds are often won by whoever has already found their sharpest finisher.

Next week needs fewer polite guesses and more faith in who is actually taking shots

The encouraging bit is simple enough: Fipster can see tight games coming. The less encouraging bit is equally plain: this round belonged to finishers more than frameworks. If next week brings another set of close fixtures, the model will need to be braver about individual scorer profiles and less inclined to assume that balance alone will do the work. Football does enjoy making neat forecasts look slightly embarrassed.