As Joni Mitchell sang in Big Yellow Taxi, “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone”, and that appears to be the case with Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and the arbitrary questioning of his place as England number one.
Following the Three Lions’ 4-0 drubbing to Hungary on Tuesday night, it’s now surely a case of ‘taxi for’ anyone stupid or misguided enough to continue with the ridiculous shouts that understudy Aaron Ramsdale and not Pickford should be Gareth Southgate’s first choice for this year’s World Cup finals.
The debacle at Molineux was England’s heaviest home defeat for over 94 years since Scotland’s ‘Wembley Wizards’ hammered them 5-1 at Wembley on March 31, 1928, and an even worse loss than the famous 6-3 humiliation to Hungary, dubbed ‘Match of the Century’ in 1953 (their first ever defeat at home to continental opposition). At least that Hungarian team, ‘The Mighty Magyars’, were a great side, who might have gone one better than finishing runners-up to West Germany at the World Cup the following year had captain and talisman Ferenc Puskas, ‘The Galloping Major’, been fully fit.
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Hungary haven’t even qualified for a World Cup finals for 36 years but they made a mockery of the 35 places between them and England in the FIFA rankings, and such is the scrutiny of Pickford, he was even initially blamed by BBC Sport’s Twitter account when the visitors went ahead. Their Tweet read: “GOAL! Hungary have taken an early lead. Roland Sallai gets on the end of a header across goal to finish past Jordan Pickford” before later being changed.
Let’s be fair here, and not sink to the levels of the Pickford bashers, Ramsdale didn’t drop any clangers as such against the Hungarians but you can bet your bottom dollar that the Everton man would now have been under some serious scrutiny had he had conceded those four goals. There are question marks over the Arsenal player for all four – getting an arm to the header for the first but not keeping it out; the second going through his legs; the third being beaten from outside the area, and possibly going down too soon for the fourth.
Regardless of the impressive season the 24-year-old might have had at the Emirates, he looked every inch the rookie here at international level on what was just his third cap. As Blues fan Peter Mac EFC wrote on Twitter: “Pickford broke Gordon Banks’ record for minutes without conceding, saves 2 penalties in the Euros final, gets save of the season in the Premier League and has been consistently Everton’s best player for 18 months. Ramsdale conceded 4 against Hungary in England’s worst home defeat since 1928.”
Yet because Ramsdale plays for a fashionable club, one of the ‘Big Six’ and one in the capital, his cause has often been championed by pundits who choose to ignore Pickford’s consistently impressive form for Everton. Even when Pickford does well for the Three Lions, and he’s earned his place as one of Southgate’s most-trusted lieutenants through his penalty heroics at both the 2018 World Cup and last summer’s European Championships – winning the Golden Glove award at the latter – he’s dammed through faint praise by ignoramuses who blurt out that he’s supposedly 'a different player in an England shirt'.
Just because Everton have endured a wretched season – recording the joint lowest equivalent points total in their entire history (with 2003/04) – there is a lazy assumption among some that Pickford must have been struggling when the truth was that his consistent levels of excellence and incredible goalkeeping in key moments played a major role in ensuring the Blues avoided their first relegation in 71 years. When it came to adding up the ECHO’s Everton player ratings for the entire season, all of the regular defenders in front of Pickford had average marks in the five point something category whereas when it came to players who had turned out in more than a dozen matches, the goalkeeper earned a score of 6.51 to be pipped to top spot by Richarlison (6.51) by just one hundredth of a point.
Pickford earned that rating with some crucial displays in the run-in, including receiving a perfect 10 in the 1-0 win at home to Chelsea when he spectacularly denied Cesar Azpilicueta with that aforementioned ‘save of the season’, and then a 9 in the 2-1 victory at Leicester City the following weekend when the Blues secured their first Premier League success on the road since the previous August. It was telling that having kept Everton up, Pickford was rested for their final fixture against Ramsdale’s Arsenal when deputy Asmir Begovic conceded five. Perhaps what they are doing just flies under the radar with some or maybe there’s some underlying bias against them that is afflicting him?
The legendary Neville Southall called on Everton to adopt a siege mentality during their recent battle against the drop because he claimed that nobody else wanted them to stay up, while also hitting out over what he described as a “witch hunt” against Pickford, who with 45 international appearances to date is continuing to extend his record as the club’s most-capped England player of all-time. When it comes to nit-picking over Pickford’s displays though, it’s not just Blues who are understandably paranoid.
Sunderland fan Philip West hit the nail on the head on Twitter when it came to the pedants’ micro scrutiny of a local lad for him and home-grown product of his club when Ramsdale was on his way to a clean sheet in the goalless stalemate against Italy last week. He wrote: “Jordan Pickford is the first England goalkeeper I’ve ever seen whose position seems to be under threat every time his stand-in makes any form of save, routine or otherwise. There IS an agenda against Pickford, no matter what anyone says. A bizarre and pathetic agenda.”
As this correspondent has pointed out before, whether it’s pundits with Anfield connections still smarting over his tackle on Virgil van Dijk (an admittedly wild challenge but one that elicited a much wilder reaction from many who should know better), London-based scribes or the Newcastle United fans who threw their inflatable dinosaurs on to the Goodison Park turf in disgust after Alex Iwobi’s winning goal against their side – on a night in which their Sunderland nemesis didn’t even play – there’s an awful lot of people with plenty to say about Everton’s keeper. But whatever the reasons behind why they say what they say, one thing they can no longer utter with any degree of credibility are now laughable claims that Pickford isn’t England’s number one.
