Unfortunately it’s another week, another injury, as Jaime and Carlos can’t dance tomorrow due to a torn abdominal muscle. Jaime will receive a bye through to the next week of the competition when she’ll hopefully be able to perform again. That means there are only nine routines in store for us – let’s hope they include some bangers!

The last time a contestant missed a week due to injury it was the very talented Delta, who was going to give us a cha cha to Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John. She’s back on cha cha now, but as it’s no longer Icons Week, instead she and Kai will dance to Jennifer Lopez’ Let’s Get Loud. Delta hasn’t really had a miss so far, being near the top of the leaderboard every single week, and for me personally her Latin numbers have been my favourite, so I can’t wait to see how she’ll handle the cha cha. Training footage looks promising so far!

But interestingly a lot of viewers have disagreed with the judges’ high scores for Delta, dubbing her the second most overmarked dancer of the competition, next only to Graeme. For me Graeme has been a bit hit or miss – I think he’s got some real technical skill but struggled with energy in his salsa, samba and jive, and I’d tend to agree that maybe the judges were a little generous there. Judges also tend to be generous marking the Couple’s Choice in general, so I don’t think he’ll be in any trouble this week. He and Lauren are dancing to Peter Gabriel’s version of The Book of Love by The Magnetic Fields.

On the other end of the spectrum, viewers have apparently been unhappy with supposed undermarking for Dani and Nikita. Dani had a bit of a breakthrough last week though with her performance-heavy Viennese Waltz, and given that that dance was choreographed in more of a free-flowing style with lots of out-of-hold sections and even a lift, this week’s American Smooth (to It Had to Be You by Harry Connick Jr) should be very much in her wheelhouse. It’ll be a foxtrot-style AS, but Dani’s danced foxtrot before too, so she has all the experience and ingredients she needs to succeed with her routine on Saturday night.

I’m slightly more worried about Bethany and Nancy, who are also on foxtrot, although the traditional international version which doesn’t technically permit breaking hold or lifts (the former rule, at least, is almost universally violated on Strictly.) Not only is their song – Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis – not as suited to the genre, but Bethany has a losing leaderboard record against every other remaining couple bar Dani and Nikita, with whom she ties. Having seen the dance-off twice, I’m not convinced Bethany’s got a great chance of avoiding a third visit, especially with our other dance-off assassin Jaime skipping this week due to her injury. On the other hand, the last time Nancy gave us a foxtrot, she scored a whopping 39 points, so you never know!

Cach and Maddie will be dancing the waltz to That Ain’t You by Mulaa Joans. After the foxtrot was a bit of a breakthrough for Cach with the pairing receiving compliments on the traditional choreography and technical improvements I think some more classic ballroom could be just what they need. He’ll need to work on his posture though, which has consistently been a bit hunched over; Anton and Shirley will be sure to comment on this if they notice it again.

And it’s a real ballroom bonanza this weekend as Will and Dianne are dancing the quickstep. I’m not 100% sure about the song choice of Maroon 5’s This Love and I also personally think Will may have been a little overmarked the past couple of weeks, so we’ll see whether that trend continues. This will be Will’s first time dancing ballroom since Week 3, which was admittedly a really lovely and understated routine which he performed very well for a complete beginner. Given Jaime’s absence and the thinning competition he’ll have to knock it out of the park again or risk the dance off.

Moving back to the Latin, Tabby and Mark have got a paso doble, and Tabby was very excited last Sunday to be told she’s dancing to Supermassive Black Hole by Muse! We’ve actually not seen this song and dance combination since 2013 which means it has the chance to really leave an impression. Tabby’s been a consistently high performer and I don’t see any reason why that won’t continue tomorrow. She’ll want to tap into her performance skills and show some real drama and panache to please Craig and the rest of the panel.

Lacey and Vito are on the rumba. I’m interested to see how this goes after a breakthrough dance for Lacey last week – the rumba is really really hard, since it’s such a slow and exposing dance and it’s hard to cover up technical faults with performance. Vito has an average score of 8.83 for the rumba, which isn’t bad. They’re dancing to Yellow by Coldplay.

Lastly, John and Katya have a salsa, with Daft Punk’s Get Lucky for music. John really struggled with the cha cha and was criticised by Craig for keeping his performance laid back and cool, which you certainly can’t get away with in a salsa, which needs to be a party dance full of energy. Katya’s certainly shown us some bonkers salsas before, like her rave-inspired number with 2017 winner Joe McFadden, or the controversial West Side Story routine that got front-runner Lewis Cope eliminated unexpectedly last year. We’ll see which side of that equation John ends up on!