It would be a flawed strategy to think that Everton could improve their squad by selling Jordan Pickford. And Sean Dyche should do all he can to keep England’s number one at Goodison Park if at all possible.
A report from the Daily Star claims that Manchester United are preparing to make a £45million offer for Pickford with their long-time first choice David De Gea now just a fortnight away from becoming a free agent after turning down a new two-year deal on highly reduced terms with his wages slashed from £375,000 to £200,000, although they can supposedly trigger a one-year option in his existing contract. For his part, the England number one has always expressed his happiness at Everton and only penned a new four-and-a-half year contract as recently as February 24.
With Financial Fair Play restrictions continuing to bite at the Blues and funds understood to be tight, the sale of an existing asset looks like the most straightforward way of Everton generating funds for squad rebuilding given that additional attacking options and full-back are priority positions. Realistically, Pickford and Belgium international Amadou Onana, bought from Lille for £33.5million last summer and a player who was reputed to have attracted interest from Arsenal and Chelsea during the January transfer window, offer the greatest potential for substantial fees.
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Onana is a precocious talent and given the combination of his hulking frame and twinkling toes, he appears to have the potential to become a Patrick Vieira-esque world-class midfield colossus in the near future, but in what was his debut season in English football, the truth is that the rookie often still looked green in a struggling Everton side. Shortly after his appointment, Dyche drafted in his former Burnley player Steven Defour, a compatriot of Onana’s, to give him some pointers about what he needs to bring to his game to become a Premier League star.
Although supremely confident in his own ability, the 21-year-old very much remains a work in progress and needs to be producing much more in the final third of the field given that his contributed just one goal and two assists during the 2022/23 campaign. Onana was bought with an eye on the future and this correspondent witnessed the anticipation in the impressive young man’s eyes when he visited the construction site of Everton’s new stadium for the first time last November and he looked down from the steps of the steep, single tier South Stand that will become the ‘home end’ telling fellow visitors he could “hear the fans already.”
In this respect, while it would be terrific to see him blossom into one of the mainstays in the side by the time the Blues move to their 52,888 capacity home on the Mersey waterfront – he even has the potential to be captain by then if he stays – but at this stage of his career he’s eminently more replaceable than the man who did wear the armband during the relegation scrap run-in last term. For a long time now, Evertonians have been fighting a running battle with large sections of the rest of the country over just how good Pickford is and for these same reasons, the fans who seem him up close and in action on a regular basis should realise that the notion the team could be somehow better off without him is preposterous.
Those same supporters, who have doubled down with their backing of a player they consider to be very much 'our; Jordan in the face of ignorant criticisms of him in the shape of what seems like a largely baseless vendetta, which former Everton favourites Neville Southall and Kevin Campbell have both described as a 'witch hunt', have voted him their Player of the Season for the past two years. Such choices were obvious for anyone who watched the Blues during 2021/22 and 2022/23 with Pickford playing a huge role in keeping his team up on both occasions.
A year ago, his save from Cesar Azpilicueta in Everton’s back-to-the-wall 1-0 win over Chelsea – one of at least three incredible stops that day – earned him the Premier League Save of the Season award. A couple of months later, then Blues boss Frank Lampard proclaimed it to be the best save of the entire 30-year Premier League era.
It should also not be forgotten that just a week later in the following game, Pickford followed that up with a string of stunning saves in the Blues’ 2-1 victory at Leicester City – their first Premier League success on the road since they’d triumphed 2-0 at Brighton & Hove Albion back on August 28 under Rafael Benitez. Incredibly, Pickford would repeat the trick in Everton’s first two May fixtures of 2023.
Whereas he’d had to demonstrate his fantastic agility to make those stops, merely holding his nerve and standing up to James Maddison’s penalty down the middle of the goal on May 1 – 12 months to the day since the Chelsea win – could arguably the most-valuable save in the club’s 135-year history in the Football League/Premier League. Despite dominating proceedings in what was a survival ‘six-pointer’ at the King Power Stadium, Dyche’s side could have inexplicably found themselves 3-1 down at the interval and heading into the Championship had Pickford been beaten.
Instead they rallied to earn a 2-2 draw after the break and followed up that encouraging display with their unexpected but emphatic 5-1 thrashing of Brighton a week later, which proved pivotal to avoiding a first relegation in 72 years. Even though the Blues at their lowest ebb won handsomely on the day against a Seagulls side who have never had it so good, Pickford was still called into action to make a string of impressive saves after the break as the hosts threw the kitchen sink at them, trying to get back into the contest.
Goalkeepers have often been undervalued in football and it’s worth remembering that even during in Everton’s most-successful season, 1984/85 when they won the League Championship and European Cup-Winners’ Cup, Southall was voted the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year and while Bert Trautmann of Manchester City (1955/56), Gordon Banks of Stoke City (1971/72) and Pat Jennings of Tottenham Hotspur (1972/73) all came before him, some 38 years on, the Welsh international remains the last custodian to claim the prize. The Blues would do well to remember their transfer policy over Southall in his pomp though when they recognised that as the best player in the world in his position, he was irreplaceable because as a team who have just narrowly avoided the drop, they're highly unlikely to be able to draft in a successor who is anything close to Pickford's level.
By 1990, ‘Big Nev’ was – like the 29-year-old Pickford now who has just extended his Everton record of England caps with the club to 53 – at the peak of his powers but the team had declined. Unlike the man from Washington, though, who is settled at Goodison Park, Southall handed in three transfer requests that year.
But with their prize asset tied down to a long-term contract – he’d penned a bumper seven-and-a-half year deal back in December 1988 – no potential suitors would come close to the Blues' reputed £3million valuation of Southall at a time that the £1.2million Crystal Palace had paid Bristol Rovers for Nigel Martyn was a British record for a goalkeeper. Given that Everton paid £25million for Pickford in 2017, a year before Chelsea smashed the world record to buy Kepa Arrizabalaga for £71million, if submitted, Manchester United’s potential opening offer of £45million should be treated with the similar distain Goodison chiefs showed to the Old Trafford club’s cheeky £28million joint bid for Leighton Baines and Marouane Fellaini a decade ago that was rejected out of hand as being “insulting and derisory.”
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