For the first defender in our new ‘Player Value’ series, we ask: is Coleman worth £5.5M?

One eye on the past – Coleman spent most of last season injured, largely due to a fractured leg, but he also received a muscle injury in February which ruled him out for 3 weeks. He tends to have a three-four week injury spell per season, which is something to be mindful of.

He is currently ranked first in terms of his forecasted influence at his club, for both share of goal-involvement and games involved-in goals. But this is largely due to 3 big chances in his last five games, whilst his team-mates have faltered at the same time – in other words, his rank is more about what others are not doing. That said, he often passes the eye-test, looking dangerous going forward and often pops-up in the box during open play, looking like he could score.

Taking a look at his historical stats versus similar opposition, in games three to five he has an average of 0.6 big chance shots per game – this backs-up the observation that he often looks dangerous.

One eye on the future – defensively, EVE look like they could be strong in the opening five fixtures – their opposition attacks will be made to look average at best with 3 clean sheets or more predicted.

2 clean sheets (to be conservative) in his first five would return 1.6pts per game on average, which is slightly short of his 1.9pts per game value for money target (3.9 including appearance points). However, couple that with the potential for more clean sheets and goal-involvement and he could turn out to be a very good investment indeed.

One thing to be mindful of though, is the Marco Silva impact. People have talked a lot about Silva potentially improving EVE’s attacking prospects, but might this be at the expense of their defensive stubbornness? Watford opened last season (Silva’s club at the time) conceding 3 to LIV, then clean sheets against BOU, BHA and SOU, followed by conceding in each of their next seven. This doesn’t tell us much about EVE, but rather, offers us a warning sign.

What to do? Coleman is touch-and-go value for money at worst, with the potential to return well if either, EVE start as good in defence as our algorithms are forecasting, or he converts even just one of his big chances, which we know historically, when fit, he’s well capable of doing.

As a general rule of thumb, defenders worth £5.5m or more need to be giving you consistent clean sheets (in the period you’re looking to own them), whilst maintaining a decent assist/goal threat – so only sign him if you are confident that Everton are a good bet for consistent clean sheets (in the period you’re looking to own him) and that you feel he has the potential to get you those attacking returns.

FPL Tip: the points per game target is based on player value, which implies that the more value you have on the pitch, the more points you can score.