FOUR minutes after half-time in Everton’s home game against Chelsea last March, Dominic Calvert-Lewin met Gylfi Sigurdsson’s right-wing corner with a firm downward header. Kepa Arrizabalaga saved, but Richarlison nodded the rebound over the line. It was a slightly scruffy goal and largely unexceptional. And yet it may, in time, come to occupy a hugely significant place in Everton’s history.
The week before, having led 2-0 at half-time at St James’, Everton had lost 3-2 to Newcastle. It was a game that seemed to capture a mood. There were good things happening at Everton, but there was an essential fragility, a sense that just when things seemed to be going right, something would always undermine them. Marco Silva certainly wasn’t the cause of a mentality that had been there for well over a decade, but equally he didn’t seem to be doing much to put it right.
Against Chelsea, Everton had been poor in the first half. Jordan Pickford had made a couple of decent saves and the gulf between top six and the rest had seemed clear. But at Richarlison’s goal Chelsea crumbled and Everton won 2-0. They have lost only one of 10 games since (weirdly, at Fulham). They’ve kept 10 clean sheets in 13 games.
Everton are now the only PL team not to concede a goal this season. Well done Everton.
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) August 19, 2019
This season, while it’s obviously far too early to make anything like a definitive assessment, Everton seem a tougher side than has been the case in recent seasons, capable of maintaining that defensive record even in unpromising circumstances. They survived Morgan Schneiderlin’s red card to hold out for a goalless draw at Crystal Palace with relative comfort and then battled for a 1-0 win against Watford on Saturday. In neither game were they particularly fluent, but they had the organisation and resolve to preserve their clean sheet. And when that organisation was threatened, they had Pickford.
Any position based more on stopping the opposition than on creating is difficult to measure accurately through statistics. To an extent you’re always reliant on the opponent and often being in the right position, something that is by definition uncountable, will head off an attack before it has had a chance to materialise. Peter Shilton explained in his first autobiography how he felt many of his best games were those in which he barely touched the ball because he had organised his defence so well and got his own positioning almost perfect.
The game has moved on since then and Shilton’s type of goalkeeper, remaining deep in his box, barely exists any more. It would be unrealistic to apply Shilton’s logic entirely to a modern keeper.
Pickford, certainly, with his ability with the ball at his feet, will actively want to be involved in a way Shilton perhaps didn’t. But the wider point remains, that often for goalkeepers not catching the eye is a sign of the basic competence that marks out the best. Many goalkeepers have agreed that actually having to make a save can be a sign of being out if position in the first place; Edwin van der Sar, for instance, rarely made spectacular saves because his positioning tended to be so good.
| Jordan Pickford & Troy Deeney. [Jan Kruger] pic.twitter.com/mXoBKueRuE
— – (@FootbaIlHQ) August 18, 2019
Pickford, in that defeat to Newcastle, became involved in an extended to-and-fro with the crowd, based largely on his Sunderland background. It was widely believed that that had distracted him – which may be true, although such theories are easy to posit post hoc, and in another game it could probably be proved just as conclusively that he had been inspired by personalising the battle.
But what has been noticeable has been how few headlines Pickford has made since, other than when he helped England beat Switzerland to win a penalty shoot-out in the Nations League third-place play-off. This season Opta stats show he has made only four saves but given that statistic has gone hand in hand with two clean sheets, and in two hard-fought games, the implication is that he has been fulfilling Shilton’s dictum that being too overtly involved is not a good sign for a keeper.
“At the moment, Jordan is showing more maturity, he has the quality and he’s showing that more in the right moments,” said Marco Silva. “It is something I am demanding from him to be the guy in some moments is calm.”
It’s easy to forget Pickford is still only 25. He exploded into the limelight while he was still very young for a keeper. The nature of the position means there will be more mistakes but the recent signs are that Pickford is becoming more solid and less spectacular and that could be a valuable foundation for Everton.
