Frank Lampard has hailed his goalkeeper Jordan Pickford as making the best save of the entire 30-year Premier League era with his incredible stop against Chelsea last season which the Everton manager believes has ended attempts from critics outside of the club who have wanted to “shout him down.” Pickford dashed from one side of his goal to the other after the ball rebounded off the post against Chelsea to spectacularly deny visiting captain Cesar Azpilicueta from the rebound in Everton’s crucial backs to the wall 1-0 victory on May 1, a stop that was named the Premier League’s Save of the Season.
However, Lampard believes it was actually the best piece of goalkeeping in the competition during Pickford’s lifetime and he made the point in front of a packed audience for a live edition of the Men in Blazers podcast at Washington DC’s historic Howard Theatre. The Blues boss said: “I think the reason he takes tons of s*** is because he’s a brilliant footballer. If you play at the highest level and particularly if you’re England’s number one, there’s no other position as a footballer in England that has the scrutiny of England’s number one.
“The minute you get the jersey, someone wants to take it off you or say why it should be taken off you. That’s some real pressure that no one will understand other than Jordan and England goalkeepers.
“In terms of how it is to work with Jordan, I was lucky enough to play with fantastic goalkeepers, Petr Cech mainly, but what I would say is when you coach and when you manage, it’s such a funny world because you’re a genius if you win and you’re useless if you lose. Sometimes you’re just reliant on brilliant players doing their job.”
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Lampard, whose squad are preparing for the first match of their two-game US tour against Premier League rivals Arsenal in Baltimore on Saturday night, added: “When you’re talking about goalkeepers, you can’t do anything in this sport unless you’ve got goalkeepers that can do things like that because that’s three points, Jordan’s three points. To be fair, this save is a different level, this save is not save of the season, for me that’s save of the Premier League era, personally I really believe that.
“I don’t know the tactics of goalkeeping or the technical aspect of it, that’s Jordan and Alan Kelly (Everton’s goalkeeping coach) who coached him every day. The speed of getting up and getting across, changing at the last second, it’s something that you work on so hard but it’s a natural talent as well.
“What Jordan has done there is just a culmination of huge talent, dedication and hard work. He’s a dream to work with because he gives everything every day on the training pitch and that’s not always the norm and that’s what top players do.
“That’s why he gets the credit since I’ve been at the club, that he’s been deserving for a long time. Jordan’s been a great goalkeeper for a long time and outside of Everton people have maybe wanted to shout that down – now no one can say anything.”
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