James Trafford is a realist.
He knew as he was coming through the Manchester City academy that if he was ever going to play for the first team he had to be as good as Ederson with his feet if not better. It's why he put extra effort into training up that part of his game as well as lasering in on how to improve his hands.
That also means that little fazes the Cumbrian-born goalkeeper raised in the same part of the world that produced Scott Carson, Dean Henderson, and Curtis Anderson. Training with Pep Guardiola and the stars of the first team was seen as natural progression - "You see them more as teammates rather than really famous big names, they're just normal men at the end of the day," Trafford told the Manchester Evening News as he came through - in the same way that he grasped the opportunity to be England Under-21 stopper in March.
