Each day we pick out a player and cut through the noise to give analytical, objective insight. Jordan Pickford is in focus today.
- Article first published in March
Jordan Pickford
- Age: 29
- Position: Goalkeeper
- Club: Everton
- Country: England
Jordan Pickford putting pen to paper on a new four-and-a-half-year contract will have calmed the Everton nerves surrounding the future of their number one goalkeeper, but his new deal doesn't seem to have quelled interest in the England international.
Tottenham have been linked with a swoop for the 29-year-old, while Manchester United were touted as a possible destination over the winter - but would he be the right choice?
Playing in a team under veritable threat of relegation from the Premier League will generally mean you are a busier keeper than one playing in a side challenging for Europe, but that plays into the narrative that Pickford is a good shot-stopper.
He faces and saves so many attempts that people sometimes overlook the ones he has let in, and the post-shot xG metric is a good measure for shot-stopping form (over the short-term) and shot-stopping ability (over the long-term).
Post-shot xG, or psxG, takes into account on-target attempts face, using variables such as accuracy, power, swerve and dip to generate a probability of any given shot being saved by the goalkeeper.
Based on this metric, Pickford has performed above average this season with a psxG difference of +2.1. He's in decent enough form.
However, over the longer-term (ability), he is generally an average shot-stopper. Since signing for Everton in 2017, Pickford has underperformed his psxG by -3.7. He has been a model of consistency, not having one 'terrible' season nor one 'tremendous' season, roughly performing where we would expect for an average GK.
To compare to Tottenham and Manchester United stoppers, Hugo Lloris and David De Gea, both have been roughly as consistent as Pickford but have had at least one 'tremendous' shot-stopping season that has been the difference between their team finishing in the top four and not.
Pickford is yet to have such a season, but there is positive in being consistent at least. The Premier League benchmark in this metric is Alisson, who has overperformed his pxSG by an average of +3.58 per season in his five Premier League campaigns, consistently winning Liverpool games and points.
One area Pickford excels is in his ability to make defensive actions outside of his penalty area, or in simple terms being the modern day 'sweeper keeper'.
This season, he ranks only thirteenth in terms of defensive actions outside the box per 90 with 1.2, but that in itself is impressive given the fact Everton generally play fairly deep.
In comparison, DDG ranks eighteenth at 0.8, and we know how important a goalkeeper with the ability to come off his line is to Erik ten Hag, so Pickford would be an improvement there. Lloris, however, averaged a slightly improved 1.24.
Passing is a huge strength of Pickford's too, and long passes at that.
The average distance of his pass is the greatest in the league at 4.14 yards, showing just how capable he is of beating opposition press and finding a man in space, while getting his team on the attack and turning the opposite team in an instance.
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