Everton FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid

The pick of the bunch is Tarkowski at £6.0m. Our projections have him around 28-29 points across the six, which is proper defender territory, and he's the sort of player this column exists for: never rotated, never rested, wins every header in both boxes and picks up the odd goal off a set piece when the mood takes him. Only about 1 in 10 managers own him, which is baffling given the run. Behind him, Pickford at £5.5m is the same bet in gloves — projected for a tidy 23-odd points, plays every minute of every game, and saves points on the weeks the clean sheet doesn't come. Owning both is legal but greedy; pick one.

If you'd rather have the attacking version, Ndiaye at £6.0m is the model's preferred midfielder — around 24 points projected, and he's the one Everton attacker enough managers trust that roughly 1.5 in 10 already own him. Dewsbury-Hall at £6.5m projects almost identically but sits below Ndiaye in our pecking order and costs more, so the choice makes itself. And for the genuinely tight-fisted, Mykolenko at £4.5m — owned by barely anyone — is projected north of 20 points, which at that price is money you're basically not spending.

The honest caveat: Everton's attack ranks mid-table, ninth in our numbers, so the midfielders are steady-points picks rather than haul machines — Ndiaye can go big on his day, but you're buying 4-6 most weeks, not fireworks. And two of the toughest fixtures (Man Utd, Spurs) land in gameweeks 3 and 4, so the clean sheets may cluster around Palace, Ipswich and Hull rather than flow every week.

But that's fine. You're not buying romance here, you're buying a defence that ranks top six with a kind run and players who play 90 minutes every single week. The call: buy Tarkowski. If the budget's stretched, Mykolenko does a cheaper impression of the same thing. Pickford if you need a keeper. Just get a piece of this back line before the clean sheets start.