Kasper Waarts Thenza Høgh and Josh Campbell made the round awkward in all the right places

Four correct calls out of six is tidy enough. The trouble was that the two wrong ones were the sort that leave a mark: Rangers losing late to Hibernian, and Celtic’s win at Kilmarnock turning into a far wider margin than the model allowed for. The round was not badly read so much as unevenly weighted. Fipster found the right side of several tight games, then missed the one match where a single scorer profile mattered more than the broad shape of the contest.

The narrow calls mostly held their line

The model did its best work where the margins stayed small. Dundee beating Aberdeen 2-0, Heart Of Midlothian sweeping past Dundee Utd 4-0, ST Mirren edging ST Johnstone 1-0, and Celtic winning at Kilmarnock all sat inside the broad direction Fipster had picked. That matters because these were not wild guesses rescued by luck; they were outcomes where the basic read — home edge in three cases, away quality in one — survived contact with the actual scoreline. The cleanest lesson is that Fipster was better at identifying which side would carry control than at naming exactly who would supply the damage.

Celtic at Kilmarnock was the best call for a reason

If there was one prediction that deserved a quiet nod, it was Celtic away from home. The model backed an away win and got that part right; more importantly, it trusted the right kind of game state. Once Kasper Waarts Thenza Høgh scored early and kept going, the match stopped being about whether Celtic would win and became about how badly they could stretch it. He finished with three goals, while Erik Nygren and Luke McCowan added more. That is exactly where a model earns its keep: not by pretending every away win will be polite, but by spotting when one attacking pattern is likely to overwhelm a weaker defensive setup.

Rangers-Hibernian was where the reading went soft

The miss came at Rangers, and it came from leaning too hard on home advantage and too little on how little room there was between these sides before kick-off. Fipster called a home win; Hibernian took it 2-1 after Josh Campbell scored from the spot and Callum Wright settled it late. The model had no player call to hide behind here, which makes the error cleaner rather than uglier: it simply over-valued Rangers’ expected control and under-valued Hibernian’s ability to stay alive long enough for Raphael Sallinger to matter behind them. Late winners are rude things. This one was especially rude because it arrived after Rangers had already been dragged back into it by Changa Chaiwa’s own goal.

The round belonged to names Fipster never pointed at beforehand

The player story was almost entirely off-script. Fipster made no scorer calls in any fixture this round, so every decisive name arrived as an unforeseen one: Joseph Westley and Joseph Bevan for Dundee, Tom Renaud, Calvin Miller, Cláudio Braga and Joshua McPake for Heart Of Midlothian, James Gullan for ST Johnstone before Killian Phillips answered from the spot for ST Mirren, Kasper Waarts Thenza Høgh doing most of Celtic’s heavy lifting, Michael Schjønning-Larsen briefly giving Kilmarnock something back, and Josh Campbell plus Callum Wright deciding Rangers-Hibernian. That is not just a list of scorers; it is a reminder that this round belonged to finishers rather than general patterns. The standout ratings backed that up too: Joseph Bevan’s goal and assist shaped Dundee’s win, Kasper Waarts Thenza Høgh dominated Celtic’s afternoon, Maksymilian Stryjek kept Kilmarnock respectable despite conceding five, and Raphael Sallinger did enough for Hibernian to leave Glasgow with points.

The next job is plain enough: keep trusting the broad reads when they are supported by form, but stop assuming tight fixtures will stay tidy just because they look balanced on paper. Round 2 rewarded patience in four matches and punished neatness in two others. That is usually how these things go when you are trying to predict football without pretending you can bully it into order.