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England Legend Has Advice For Everton Man & It’s Spot On – “Seek Perfection Even If It Is Elusive”

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With Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, England’s Number One stopper under manager Gareth Southgate, it’s very much his place to lose at this moment in time and his performance for his country against Spain during the October international break is going to have done his hopes of keeping the spot no harm at all.

Okay, there was one moment, but no player is every 100% perfect.

With that moment creating headlines and discussion points for plenty, 125 capped goalkeeper Peter Shilton gave his own thoughts, and rather than being critical, if anything he reminded our 24-year-old that he was still developing, still needed to improve and in no way could become complacent or too comfortable – some would argue exactly what happened to Joe Hart.

Writing in a piece for the Daily Mail following the game, Shilts explained.

“Gareth Southgate has found a goalkeeper for the long term, but we must not go overboard about Jordan Pickford’s display in Seville. First the praise. This was an outstanding England performance overall in which the Everton keeper played a significant role. It is very rare that you can say, categorically, that the last line of defence was responsible for making two out of the three goals his team scored.”

He qualified the comments by saying whilst down to him, not solely because others players had to finish the move off and whilst an obvious distinction, a fair one I think but he kept the praise going for his distribution and quick thinking, encouraging him to continue doing that when opportunities present themselves as opposed to playing short for possession purposes.

“I’d like to think Jordan will carry on trying to achieve that accuracy in his distribution and I must say that in the first half he did everything you would expect from your keeper.”

As for his attempted Cruyff turn, whilst rare, he needs to learn from it.

“Much has been made of his second-half performance, in particular the moment he surrendered possession to Rodrigo by trying to do a Cruyff trick. You see this kind of mistake very occasionally from keepers but that was an aberration which I’d forgive him for because that will happen maybe once in a season. Jordan has his own style and technique and there were a couple of times when he was all at sea, but he will get better with age and experience. He will also know that he is not the finished article.”

With some pundits relishing the opportunity to have a dig and be controversial for content, I think that last point is really all that needs saying. Pickford will work on improvement, England and Everton will work with him on that and as Shilton adds ‘you must constantly seek perfection even if it is elusive. He must not be allowed to believe the job is his, no matter what.’

That’s what the top players do and if he does that, he will mature and grow into an incredibly top keeper. It’s over to him…

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