England's best goalkeeper: Should Jordan Pickford, Nick Pope or Dean Henderson start for England? Paul Macdonald from FootballCritic explains

When it comes to goalkeepers, depending on your tactical approach to the game, the art of saving shots is probably lower down the list of priorities than it has ever been in history.

For the possession-minded and the coaches keen to break the lines from their own penalty area, being able to pass with the fizz and accuracy of David Beckham is almost the main starting point from which everything else is assessed from.

It is, after all, this quality which sets Jordan Pickford apart for England. When Everton spent £30m on his services in 2017 it was little to do with him conceding 1.7 goals per game in a dreadful Sunderland team that would finish bottom. Yes, you can make the case that his saves - a huge 4.7 P90 in 16/17 - averted more heavy defeats on many occasions, but it’s a lot easier to play like that when your team is so bad that expectations are minimal.

No, Everton spied a goalkeeper that is exceptional in recirculating the ball, confident while doing so, and while predominantly left-footed is comfortable shifting to either side, playing fast passes to the full-backs or going longer, with accuracy, if necessary. Ten years ago this would have been some prerequisites for a ball-playing centre-back, but here we are. Goalkeeping is almost entering a post-save environment, where the biggest teams have so much of the ball and can limit attacks against them so effectively that making a save is rarer than being involved in the build-up of an attack.

And the conundrum for Pickford is that Everton aren’t part of that elite, but England most definitely want to be. Therefore, despite his erratic form culminating in his maniacal gesticulations as he almost let an effort against Wolves slither through his legs, Southgate is much more likely to forgive those aberrations than his club might.

English football has always prided itself on appreciating good goalkeepers and it’s always been referenced as a proudly English trait, that the national team has always had a good selection of them (even if that wasn’t always true). Therefore it will take longer to shift the fan mindset away from the thought that the goalkeeper’s job, first and foremost, is to stop the ball going in the goal.

And from that perspective, Pickford’s position as England No. 1 should quite rightly be under threat. His 1.5 goals conceded P90 is among the highest in the league, while his saves P90 of 2.6 places him among the best keepers in the league such as Ederson and Alisson - players who do far more passing than saving - except he’s not in an elite team and he’s conceded eight more than those two combined.

And beyond his mistake against Wolves, there’s been a pattern of concentration loss, of poor positional sense, and flat-out mistakes. From the last-minute Merseyside Derby aberration, we can look at a player who Errors Leading to Chances + Goals was a combined eight in 18/19 - the highest in the Premier League - and is a combined five this season. He is a contradiction in terms of looking very confident when the ball is on the floor, and very much the opposite when it is in the air or whizzing towards him.

Dean Henderson and Nick Pope have emerged as the two leading candidates to usurp Pickford if Southgate runs out of patience. While Pope is a respected shot-stopper, has been part of the England set-up for some time and is clearly well thought-of, his style of play is somewhat anachronistic with the ball at his feet and though that’s largely Burnley’s style, his pass completion rate of 37% (from mostly long balls) is the joint worst in the division. Could he ‘learn’ a different approach? At 28, probably not.

Henderson is an intriguing option; given David De Gea’s precarious performances at Manchester United, the on-loan Sheffield United man has been particularly effective for Chris Wilder’s side. But, like Pope, many of his build-up involvements at United are longer passes and he’s not been completely immune to errors, particularly with moving his feet, as games against Liverpool and Newcastle showed. And where he will be playing in 2020/21 is still unclear; if he’s back at United he’ll probably still be providing back-up to De Gea, in which case how can Southgate make the call to replace Pickford with a second-choice?

Southgate has backed Pickford on at least three separate occasions, most recently in March, saying: “He's been a key part of our success over three years. It's good he has competition to achieve a high level. He manages to brush those things off [errors], it's key for any player, the ability to brush things off kind of determines your career.”

So the idea of simply replacing Pickford just isn’t that simple and for England he probably deserves the benefit of the doubt - for now.

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