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Jordan Pickford could have made Everton transfer - he has shown his true qualities

Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and (inset) Neville Southall
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


There’s been a big talking point around Jordan Pickford because the Finland game was probably the first occasion in a long time that he’s been on the bench for England. Us as Evertonians and me personally, we can be harsh on our own players, we see them week in and week out, and we want more from our players.

I think Jordan has got massive credit in the bank with Evertonians and I feel even more so for England. I don’t think England would have got anywhere near as far as they have in recent tournaments without Jordan and I don’t think Everton would be in the Premier League if it wasn’t for him.

Yes we can have a moan but name me a goalkeeper who doesn’t make mistakes. Jordan can rattle a few cages, even with our own fans and our own players, never mind the opposition but that’s just his character and you’ve got to live with it. He’s been Everton’s key player in what has been a difficult period for the club under Farhad Moshiri’s ownership when we’ve often been battling against relegation. There can be the odd unforced error but overall, he’s still very much England’s number one for me.

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We could have lost Jordan to teams that could offer him Champions League football, but he seems to get Everton, understanding the football club and the fanbase, who he has immersed himself with. He’s had a bit of a slow start to the season, but they all have at Everton.

Nobody at the football club is pleased with our start to the season but in our last game with Newcastle United, Jordan displayed his true qualities.

It’s up to us to start winning football games now. We knew from last season that we needed to score more goals but while we’ve started to do that a little bit, we’ve been struggling at the opposite end of the pitch with a defence that has been unsettled through injuries and suspension.

That hasn’t helped Jordan either. You like to have a settled back five that’s a solid unit to get the best out of each other, but he hasn’t really had that in front of him.

Jordan will also be disappointed by how things ended in the summer. There was a lot of pressure on England to go and win something but after his heroics got them through to the final – and kept them in the game against Spain – they fell at the last hurdle but hopefully he comes back to Everton now with the right mindset to get back to the standards we all expect from Jordan.

Because they feel more comfortable on the ball, goalkeepers often take more chances now. This leads to plenty of soft goals being given away though and I reckon the strikers from back in the 1990s would love to play now against opponents willing to give them a bit of a sniff.

Jordan often seems to be under pressure when he’s on the ball for Everton. We’ve got the long ball down the line for Dominic Calvert-Lewin to get his head on it but he has got other passes in his locker and is capable of spreading it around a bit more like he does for England although with them he might be alongside better players standing in better positions and international football is probably a slower tempo.

He probably gets more of a chance to show his skills on the ball when he’s playing for England compared to when he’s back at Everton. It goes back to a previous complaint of mine about Everton’s press, or lack of it.

You see players like Jordan making mistakes because they’re put under pressure. Everton’s players should think ‘their goalkeeper isn’t as good as Jordan so let’s question them and see if they’ve got the balls of steel that he’s shown throughout his career.’

Whether it’s standing up to save James Maddison’s penalty at Leicester or just trying to play out from the back, he tries to take responsibility. Sometimes he raises that hand to say sorry, but he takes it on the chin.

He’s 30 years old but after seven years at the club, goalkeepers like him can easily go on for another seven at least.

I think Jordan has now proven himself to be Everton’s best goalkeeper since Neville Southall. I remember Nigel Martyn coming in and I think he was great for us, as was Tim Howard at times, although he probably stayed a little bit too long.

You could probably say the same about Nev to be honest. However, who would tell Nev to go?

Obviously by the time I was in the first team, Nev didn’t have the ability of when he was in his prime and the best goalkeeper in the world but just having his presence and his mentality around the place was huge. When he did go, wherever he went, you ended up following them.

I used to get on with the goalkeepers, even though I’d give them massive stick. That’s because I had very high expectations of what I wanted from them and wasn’t afraid to tell them what they’d done and that helped me out.

That rubbed off on Nev and he’d be telling me where to go, especially if I was standing in his area.

I made my debut when Nev was in goal. You always dream that you’d get to play alongside a legend, but I remember giving him advice once in a Merseyside Derby and I was very scared.

He thought ‘how am I going to phrase this?’ But he took the words that a spotty 17-year-old kid had told him on board as I was trying to do everything I could to make sure we won and Nev played well.

At Rangers we had Stefan Klos who was brilliant, even though he was relatively small for a keeper but could dive all over the place. We then got Ronald Waterreus who was a PSV legend, he was a gentleman, and he thought he could play football – and he could.

If I was playing left-back, he’d ping the ball knee height, 30 or 40 yards on a dime, every time. His trial at the club basically amounted to him kicking the ball to us in training and that was something new to me, a goalkeeper who could probably pass the ball better than any of the outfield players in the team.

It reminded me of Neville having a blue Southall number one jersey hung up in the changing room before every game in case he got the nudge to go up. It never happened but he fancied himself in that respect.

That makes me smile, the thought of Nev going up front wearing a blue shirt with one Southall on the back!

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