Mickey Mansell (#40 FRH, 90.15 (#41), 318-362 (46.76%, #82))
Tomoya Goto (#111 FRH, 85.26 (#82), 93-84 (52.54%, #40))
Jonny remains in the top eight in the world, at least for now, defending quarter final money here (and then final money in the Matchplay in a few months) might make this look like a bit of a false ranking, and while he's turned form around to a decent degree in the second half of the season, early in 2024 he was looking quite some way off his best and frankly ordinary at times. Jonny took until July to get anything really notable going on the floor, generally reaching the board final in fairness, but in events 13/14 he would push on to a first quarter final of the season, then get what would be his sole win of the season, maybe being slightly fortunate in terms of draws (the only other seed here he played on that day was Martin Schindler) but having to come through some of the tougher wildcards such as Menzies and Plaisier to claim that title. The back half of the tour was better, getting a few quarters and finishing off with another final to end the season, playing his best match of the day in the final against Josh Rock but losing the deciding leg. Clayton did also make a Euro Tour final in the Netherlands, as the last seed he beat Chisnall, Searle and van Gerwen before losing to Rock again, but outside of a quarter final to start and finish the tour, Jonny couldn't get a great deal going with more than half the events seeing him not make the final day. TV was probably about as much as we can realistically expect at this stage - he scraped through two rounds of the UK Open against Tim Wolters (er) and Ross Smith (that's OK) before going out to eventual winner van den Bergh, who'd also beat him at Blackpool after a win against Barney, while his best run of the season came in Leicester, making the quarters with a win over Ritchie Edhouse and another one over Smith before the seedings threw him at Luke Humphries. Luke would beat him again in Dortmund in round two, he didn't make the Grand Slam, while he might want a first round Minehead defeat last month to Florian Hempel back. Things are trending better than they were, but he's not a top 8 player any more and, now in his fifties, may not get back there and an exit from the top 16 tier may be more likely through the bottom than back up towards the top.
Mickey is here for a ninth occasion, and he's not had the greatest of times, but he's at least made round two the last few times he's been here after a real rough spell of defeats. Mansell crept in through the Pro Tour rankings, the floor being really disappointing, at least in terms of results. He was just outside the top 50 in averages, but just the two board wins - one in the first event where he went out to Nick Kenny, and one with three to go against Danny Noppert, both in deciding legs, would leave him without the cash to reach the Players Championship Finals, no big lumps in a single event not being helped by an eight tournament streak of first round defeats mid season. So to get here, he'd need the Euro Tour, and he did just enough. Making three events in Sindelfingen, Rosmalen and Hildesheim, he'd win his first game each time (Wright, O'Connor and a HNQ) then lose to the seed each time (Heta, Price and Dobey). This obviously left him short of the Euros, and well short of the Matchplay and Grand Prix, so that only left two things. The UK Open was fine, beating Ian White then losing to Chris Dobey is probably standard, but he did qualify for the Grand Slam through the wildcards, and boy did he take that one to the hoop, getting wins over Wade and Rowby to get out of a group that also featured Luke Humphries, then coming through knockout games against Danny Noppert and then a deciding leg thriller with Cameron Menzies to reach a first (singles) major semi final. There, he was able to stay in touch with Martin Lukeman for much of the event, but fall just short in a 16-12 reverse. Still, despite that, it must give him new confidence in his stage game, we've know he can do it on the floor on occasions, he is a Pro Tour winner after all, but who knows for this one now?
Tomoya is another player making a second appearance here having made his debut last season, and twelve months ago it was a pretty successful debut, knocking out Ian White 3-1 before losing to Ryan Searle by the same scoreline with a respectable display, and he'll look to try to replicate that this time around. Goto has qualified through the PDJ method - a ten tournament national series of events that led into a final eliminator for a worlds spot, as opposed to going through the points table which would have seen Seigo Asada qualify. Instead, Goto, who finished fifth in that tour's averages but outside of the top ten in the rankings with just the one win, binked that finals day, with a lot of the better known names either not being there, or being knocked out before Tomoya could face them, with Asada losing the other semi final, and the top two seeds in his half of the draw going out before the quarter finals. Still, you can only beat what's in front of you and Tomoya did. Goto oddly did better on the Asian Tour, getting one title late in the season against Lourence Ilagan, and adding another three finals along the way. Oddly, Goto finished top of the averages if you exclude players who played less than a dozen matches, so he must have been doing something right, even if it didn't turn into results as often as he would have liked.
This bit of the draw is somewhat open. Goto's a clear dog to Mansell, but he's a live dog at least, projections giving him maybe 30% year long, but there is a fair bit of a consistency differential and most of the numbers came after Mansell had his big run (heck, that might have been the last game he played), so pushing it down to one in four doesn't seem that unreasonable. Mansell against Clayton projects perhaps closer - Jonny being the better player, but year long again it's giving Mickey maybe 40% chances, but if we strip down to the last six months or so (i.e. remove when Clayton was playing well below his best) and look at more recent form, Mickey drops to around a one in three shot. One that's good in that either match could go either way without it being an astounding upset.
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