Conor Coady has hailed manager Frank Lampard as being “fantastic for everybody” at Everton while backing under-fire goalkeeper Jordan Pickford.
Coady goes into the World Cup with England with his club side Everton having slipped down to 17thh place in the Premier League following their 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth last Saturday.
However, despite their recent woes at the back, the Blues have generally looked like a much more solid unit this season with Coady and fellow new boy James Tarkowski building up a promising centre-back partnership.
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Lampard has compared Coady to his former Chelsea team-mate John Terry due to his leadership qualities in defence. And speaking in a press conference in Qatar ahead of England’s tournament opener against Iran on Monday, Coady said: “It’s a privilege. It’s a moment when you hear things like that it fills you with pride and puts a smile on your face, no matter what.
“I play under a fantastic manager at Everton, he’s fantastic for everybody. He helps everybody, he speaks to everybody, he’s a huge manager and we all know what he was as a player as well.
“What he’s done for me and how he’s helped me, he’s been brilliant. But to hear those words, honestly, it fills you with pride because it can’t not put a smile on your face.”
Coady spoke candidly after Everton’s 3-0 defeat at Bournemouth – their second thrashing at the hands of the Cherries in the space of four days – admitting their display was “shocking”, “nowhere near good enough” and that the players needed to take a “hard look in the mirror”. But despite the rout beginning with an uncharacteristic blunder from goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, who spilled a Dominic Solanke shot into the path of Marcus Tavernier, who opened the scoring, the 29-year-old defended his team-mate’s form.
Bournemouth fans taunted Pickford with chants of "England's number three" and "You're just a s*** Aaron Ramsdale" but Coady said: “Jordan is a top lad. Listen, he brings so much to the team as a shot-stopper but as a person, he’s so, so good to have around as well.
“He’s been England number one for a while now and I think he’s been absolutely outstanding this season, I really do. I’ve been lucky enough to play in front of him, what he brings to us at Everton but even beforehand when I played with him for England, I knew the quality he had and what sort of character he was as well.”
“Now I get the chance to experience it day-to-day and like I said, he’s a great friend of mine and a great person as well.”
Coady, who joined Everton on a season-long loan in August with an option for a permanent transfer at the end of the season, has been capped 10 times for England and admitted that his switch to Goodison Park came at the right time. Despite being Wolverhampton Wanderers’ captain since their return to the Premier League in 2018, he was frozen out by former manager Bruno Lage ahead of the current campaign, a decision that threatened his participation in the finals.
Coady said: “I always believed in myself as a player and it was up to me to try and push myself as much as I could, whether that be at Wolves or I was lucky enough to obviously move to Everton in the summer as well where I’m loving every single minute of being there. It does enter your head, of course I went back after pre-season and things weren’t looking the way I wanted them to look really at Wolves.
“It was up to me to try and push, no matter where that was going to be, and I’ve done that as much as I can so I always had belief in what I wanted to do and how I wanted to play and luckily enough now I’ve been given the opportunity to come here.”
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