A new book on Everton goalkeepers includes four loyal club servants, one who rejected an England World Cup call and another jailed after making sensational drug allegations in a Sunday newspaper. The book is reviewed by Eric Brown…
BY ERIC BROWN
Player loyalty to a single club seems to be as dead as the dodo, given increasingly frantic and undignified efforts by some to move on.
So the possibility of another Premier League club matching Everton’s record of four goalkeepers each with 400 first-team appearances in future must be slim.
Especially as current custodian Jordan Pickford is set to make it five. At the time of writing, Pickford has made 323 appearances since arriving from Sunderland in 2017. He recently hinted he is ready to sign a new Everton contract, keeping him at the club for life, so joining the 400 club will be well within reach.
Pickford is following in the footsteps left by an elite band of durable goalkeepers who became Everton icons.
Ted Sagar started this tradition with a total of 497 first-team appearances between the 1920s and the 1950s, including two First Division winners’ medals and an FA Cup winner’s medal. He won four England caps. Sagar’s total would have topped 500 but for the Second World War interrupting his career.
Acrobat Gordon West made 402 first-team games between 1961 and 1973. Like Sagar, he claimed two First Division winners’ medals and an FA Cup winner’s medal. He won three England caps but turned down the chance to be part of Sir Alf Ramsey’s 1970 World Cup squad to defend the trophy in Mexico.
The reasons have never been made clear, but a new book about Everton’s goalkeepers reveals he was always an uneasy traveller, suffered desperately from nerves before matches, and his wife was reluctant to see him disappear for several weeks.
If West had not rejected the call-up, he might well have been on duty for the fateful quarter-final defeat by West Germany after Gordon Banks fell ill. Instead, an unprepared Peter Bonetti shakily let through a couple of preventable goals.
The incomparable Neville Southall chalked up a record 751 appearances between 1981 and 1998. Welshman Southall’s amazing saves frustrated opponents and saw him acclaimed the world’s greatest goalkeeper. No wonder he is Everton’s most decorated goalkeeper, with two First Division medals, two FA Cup winners’ medals and a European Cup-Winners Cup winner’s medal. Elected the Football Writers Association’s Footballer of the Year in 1985, Southall also bagged 92 caps for Wales.
Also on the Everton roll of long-serving goalkeepers is Tim Howard, an American who played 414 games in a decade after signing from Manchester United in 2006. He’s the only member of the quartet who failed to win a medal during his Everton career, though he did earn 93 USA caps while at the club. He also scored a goal in a league match.
The personal stories of Everton goalkeepers famous and not-so-famous are revealed in “The Glovesmen of Goodison”, a meticulously researched romp through the careers of every goalkeeper in their history, from George Bargery to Pickford.
Massive thanks to everyone who has bought a copy of my new book The Glovesmen of Goodison: A History of Everton’s Goalkeepers. @PitchPublishing
Feedback has been very positive.
A real thrill signing copies in @WaterstonesLPL earlier this week and seeing it in @PritchardsBooks pic.twitter.com/eLPhIu7nau
— Paolo Wens (@PROwens1979) September 11, 2025
It came as a shock to learn that Albert Dunlop, the first goalkeeper I saw in an Everton jersey, accused teammates of taking performance-enhancing drugs during their 1962/63 title-winning season.
Apparently, Dunlop (231 appearances) was disliked by Goodison playing colleagues, with legendary forward Alex Young describing him as “a troublemaker and menacing character.”
Dunlop swore revenge on the club for transferring him to Wrexham and sold his drug allegations to The People newspaper in 1984. He had made competitor Gordon West’s life miserable, with West describing him as “a nasty piece of work, a bully and a thug.”
After Dunlop retired, he was jailed for 15 months on deception charges. He died aged just 57.
Apart from the big names, author Paul Owens features some near-forgotten goalkeepers such as David Jardine, Tommy Fern, Arthur Davies and Billy Coggins; a chapter on Everton women’s goalkeepers; and another where journalists and fans contribute their memories of outstanding goalkeeper performances at Goodison Park.
My own personal brush with an Everton goalkeeper occurred on a cricket pitch. I’d been invited to appear in a “Celebrity” cricket team taking on Wimbledon tennis players of whom I can only recall the Indian Amritraj brothers and Ross Case of Australia.
Kenneth Wolstenholme supplied commentary for a few hundred spectators, mostly tennis fans, at Beckenham, Kent.
Among my team was Geoff Barnett, then playing for Arsenal after seeing his Everton career limited to 10 games over three seasons. Fed up with an opponent constantly hoicking my deliveries towards midwicket, I moved Geoff there, thinking he’d have the safest hands in the team.
Sure enough, a few balls later, the batsman lobbed the ball gently in the air towards Geoff – and he dropped it!
‘The Glovesmen of Goodison: A History of Everton’s Goalkeepers’ by Paul Owens is published by Pitch, price £19.99.
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