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Everton’s player of the season: Jordan Pickford
Leicester had better attacking players, more goals in them. They’d score their way to safety.
It was one of many fears gnawing at Evertonian minds during the season’s fateful climax. Those concerns were almost realised just before the stroke of half-time at the King Power stadium on May 1.
James Maddison prepared to take a penalty that would have given the hosts a potentially unassailable two-goal lead at half-time.
It was a daunting moment but, in the Everton goal, Jordan Pickford had the bottle, and a bottle, to stand tall and save the day.
Using his handy research stuck to that bottle and utilising all of his nerve, England’s No 1 suspected the Leicester man would go down the middle and guessed correctly.
In a season when just about everything that could go wrong for Everton did go wrong, Pickford was right enough times to save the day.
For a team that spent most of the campaign near the drop zone, eventually finishing 17th, he was the seventh-best shot-stopper (in terms of non-penalty goals) in the top flight, with a better goal prevention rate than Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsdale and Manchester City’s Ederson among others.
That was while facing more shots than all but two of the players ranked statistically better than him this term. In terms of raw goalkeeping, he saved 118 of the 173 shots faced — meaning a save rate of 68.2 per cent.
His highlight reel stretched across the turbulent campaign; from spectacularly denying Darwin Nunez to take a point from September’s Goodison derby; a Superman stop from an Ollie Watkins effort in February; saves from Lewis Dunk and Solly March during a crucial win at Brighton; to that late diving parry from Matias Vina on Sunday. If anyone contributed the most to the Merseysiders’ survival — and others such as Abdoulaye Doucoure, Dwight McNeil and James Tarkowski made significant efforts — it was Pickford.
His maturing continues. A player once marred by errors due to loss of focus and hyperactivity has grown up. In both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, Pickford made four mistakes leading to goals. That figure was down to two in 2020-21, one in 2021-22 and two this season.
Such rushes of blood to the head, like the moment at Leicester when he raced out of his area to make a clearance only for it to backfire and nearly cost a goal, are increasingly rare.
In the eyes of many, Pickford is approaching the status of Everton’s best since the peerless Neville Southall. It is no faint praise considering the quality of others in those ensuing years such as Nigel Martyn and Tim Howard.
Southall himself, ever the contrarian, sees room for improvement. “I just think he hasn’t learned enough to break into world class,” he wrote on Twitter. “Keeps letting same type of goals in. I like him but he’s not playing to his full potential for me. There’s another 20% in him.”
There is actually optimism in the title-winning legend’s seemingly parsimonious words. If Pickford, at 29 and arguably not yet in his positional prime, has another 20 per cent of potential to unleash, then how good can he become?
It is one of the reasons Everton pushed hard to get him to agree to a new contract, aware that elite clubs would circle for their main asset should they be relegated. Those clubs may begin to test the Goodison resolve this summer anyway. It is not hard to argue a case for how Pickford would strengthen Tottenham or Manchester United (even if David de Gea’s fraught personal campaign ended on a high with the Golden Glove award).
But as emotion and relief washed over him in the tunnel after the game on Sunday, Pickford did not sound like a man in a hurry to leave the club that took a chance on him after Sunderland were relegated in 2017.
“We need to look at things as a club, as a team, as players, as staff — as a whole collective — to go forward now and make sure we’re not in this situation again,” he said.
“The last couple of years hasn’t been ideal but we keep going. It can’t go on like this and hopefully this is the start of it. It’s a massive club. The new stadium is coming soon and the opportunity is there. It’s everything coming together and hopefully pushing forward in the next couple of years.”
Pickford’s recent deal, which should keep him at the club until at least 2027, will encompass Goodison’s final games and the next step to the iconic waterfront.
It is thanks to him, perhaps more than anyone, that those games will be in the Premier League where Everton, with an incredulity reminiscent of the saves he often has no right to pull off but somehow does, remain.
If Maddison had scored that penalty a month ago, the Midlanders would likely have stayed up on goal difference at the Toffees’ expense.
The fine margin? Goals scored, naturally. The man keeping them out in an Everton shirt made all the difference.
(Top image: designed by Samuel Richardson; photo by Catherine Ivill via Getty Images)
