Many happy returns to Seamus Coleman on his 34 th birthday but while the Everton captain has now reached a venerable age for professional footballers, his recent return has shown that the Republic of Ireland international is still far from finished in the Premier League. Sunday night was a tough day at the office for Coleman and his Blues team-mates as they surrendered a 1-0 lead to lose 2-1 against Manchester United at Goodison Park but as always, the right-back put in a determined, all-action display.
Statistics compiled by Comparisonator show that despite being withdrawn 15 minutes from the end as his side chased an equaliser, Coleman’s three successful dribbles were the most of any Premier League player in his position over the weekend – along with Manchester United’s Diego Dalot and Bournemouth’s Ryan Fredericks – while he also topped the charts for offensive duels (six) and was second only to Manchester City’s Manuel Akanji with his score of 144.5 on the Defensive Index for his all-round play. Not bad going considering that the Everton skipper was only playing his second Premier League game of the season having been recalled to replace Nathan Patterson who was injured on international duty with Scotland last month.
Snapped up for a paltry £60,000 from Sligo Rovers – surely the greatest bargain buy in the Premier League era when it comes to pound-for-pound value – October 22 will represent the 13 th anniversary of Coleman making his Everton first team debut. While that baptism of fire proved to be a harsh lesson for the rookie and his colleagues – he filled in at left-back in a club record 5-0 European defeat at Benfica – after the rough diamond was polished up with a loan spell at Championship Blackpool in 2010, helping the Tangerines to promotion to the Premier League, he has been a stalwart for the Blues for more than a decade now.
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Coleman has played 30 plus matches for Everton in eight out of the last 10 seasons (the only exceptions came when he was out with his double leg break suffered on international duty with Ireland following a horror challenge from Neil Taylor that saw the Wales player sent off. Now the only player remaining at the club from David Moyes’ long spell in charge, Coleman will recognise though that time and tide wait for no man and after seeing off a string of pretenders to his throne, he now faces a major challenge for his shirt from Patterson, who, after capitalising on the senior pro’s groin injury over the summer that required surgery, installed himself as first choice for the opening seven Premier League fixtures of the campaign.
Coleman’s current contract expires next summer and it was a topic that Everton manager Frank Lampard was asked about in his pre-match press conference ahead of the Manchester United game. The Blues boss said: “Considering the injury that he carried for games in the battle to the end of the season, that not many people knew about until he was really, really struggling with it at the end, and then an operation and then a break, not many minutes and then coming into the Premier League is a massive ask for anybody, let alone where Seamus is at in his career.
“It’s another one not to answer directly now other than to say everybody here knows what Seamus is to this club, if his performance levels are there and he wants to stay then there’s no doubting he knocks on my door and says that and I’ll be like ‘let me help make this happen’ because of how I am with Seamus. I also know Seamus to be the best man – I’ve said this a lot now – one of the best people I’ve worked with in this game and he’ll always say the right thing and do the right things.
“So if he feels like he’s contributing well to this club, he’ll want to stay here and help the cause, that’s the sort of bloke he is. It’s an ongoing situation but Seamus does know, and has to know, whatever capacity he wants to be in at this club, he deserves whatever he wants.”
Coleman has often spoken of his desire to stick around long enough to help Everton end the longest-running trophy drought in the club’s history but at 34 he’s now older than the Blues’ last trophy-winning skipper Dave Watson was when he lifted the FA Cup at Wembley after beating Manchester United in 1995. ‘Waggy’ officially remained on the Goodison Park playing staff for another six years though and played his last first-team match with a 2-2 draw against Tottenham Hotspur on January 15, 2000, aged 38.
During his spell as Everton manager, Carlo Ancelotti hailed Coleman’s fitness and declared he could keep playing until he was 40 having fielded the likes of Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta beyond that age at Milan. Given that the Premier League is played at a faster pace than Serie A, such a prediction might seem ambitious but as well as his craving for silverware, Coleman has more motivations to keep on playing than his personal pride.
Coleman’s own former Blues team-mate and predecessor as captain, Phil Jagielka netted for Championship side Stoke City last weekend, prompting the Independent’s Senior Football Correspondent Richard Jolly – a journalist with a sharp mind for an illuminating statistic or observation – to point out that the player has now scored in Sheffield United matches in his teens, 20s, 30s and 40s. The man from Killybegs, County Donegal, might not be looking so far ahead just yet but there are more immediate potential landmarks on the horizon for him.
Having played against Manchester United on Sunday, Coleman now has 331 Premier League appearances for Everton which means he is now just 17 games shy of Leighton Baines, 21 behind Leon Osman and 23 off all-time leader Tim Howard on 354. It might be a tough ask once Patterson returns to fitness but in theory, the record could be broken this season. Going forward though, it might be a case of game-time being measured in terms of the number of campaigns rather than individual outings though for Coleman.
He’s now a similar age to Baines when Lucas Digne came to Goodison Park but despite Everton’s greatest left-back of the Premier League era increasing finding himself in an understudy role for the next couple of years between 2018-20, he would seamlessly slot back into the side whenever required. Coleman is such a dedicated professional and inspirational figure at the Blues, the hope must be that he can perform similar duties on the opposite flank for a good while yet.
Comparisonator is a football data comparison tool from 271 professional leagues around the world which compares players and clubs by utilising over 100 different parameters. Click here for more details.
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