ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley has his say over the Blues' online response to Lee Dixon's Jordan Pickford question
Chris Beesley
Chris Beesley
ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley has covered Everton and Liverpool both in the Premier League and abroad since 2005. He cut his teeth in professional sports journalism at the Ellesmere Port Pioneer and then the Welsh edition of the Daily Post, where he also covered Manchester United. Prior to that he worked on the student newspaper Pluto at the University of Central Lancashire, a role in which he first encountered David Moyes. Chris is well-known for his sartorial elegance and the aforementioned Scottish manager once enquired of him at a press conference: "Is that your dad's suit you've got on?" while the tradition continued in 2023 with new Blues boss Sean Dyche complimenting him on his smart appearance.
For years the Jordan Pickford baiters and haters have been peddling their tripe about how he is supposedly not good enough to be England number one. But now that the Everton hero has helped the Three Lions to become the first European nation to qualify for the 2026 World Cup on the back of a record-breaking run of clean sheets, they’re forced to change their skewed narrative.
The Blues ace eclipsed Gordon Banks’ 59-year-old record set en route to lifting the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1966 when he kept an eighth consecutive clean sheet for England in the 3-0 friendly win over Wales at Wembley last Thursday.
Having followed that up with another one as he won his 80th cap in Riga, helping his country to a 5-0 win over Latvia to clinch their place in next summer’s finals, even the most dyed-in-the-wool Pickford bashers ran out of their spurious amnunition.
So, with a change of tack required, because few beyond the turnstiles of Hill Dickinson Stadium can seemingly be satisfied for a moment with the thought of the keeper enjoying his football with both Everton and England, and at a time when the player himself is on the cusp of announcing a new contract to effectively commit himself to the Blues for the rest of his career, Lee Dixon felt compelled to express his surprise that Pickford has not moved to a “bigger club.”
Playing for ‘little old Everton’ hasn’t held him back so far. All 80 of those international appearances – twice as many as Phil Jagielka the club’s previously most-capped England player while with them – have come during his time with the Blues, whether they were competing in Europe, like Thomas Tuchel makes such an issue of saying he’d prefer his players to be, or not.
Were people saying the same about Banks in 1966 because he was ‘only’ playing for Leicester City given that they only had a solitary League Cup on their honours board at the time? Turning out for the Foxes and then Stoke City – Banks was with the Potters when he was voted FWA Footballer of the Year in 1972 – didn’t stop him from being named FIFA Goalkeeper of the Year for six consecutive years from 1966 onwards.
Everton have competed at the highest level of the game – almost continuously, save for four seasons – from the start having been the only founder members of the Football League in 1888 (before Dixon’s beloved Arsenal and any of the so-called ‘Sky Six’ were involved) who are also ever-presents in the Premier League following its formation in 1992. Like Arsenal, they have enjoyed a period of successful longevity that only Liverpool and Manchester United can top, having won major honours across nine separate decades.
They’ve played 14 more seasons in the top flight than Arsenal and their unbroken run in the division was achieved through on-field merit rather than the Gunners who somehow lobbied their way into an expanded First Division in 1919/20 when football resumed after the First World War, despite having only finished fifth in the second tier in the final season before play was paused, below third-placed Barnsley and fourth-placed Wolverhampton Wanderers who both stayed down. And they’ve never been relegated since.
This correspondent applauds Everton’s decision to call Dixon out because unfortunately – such is the ignorance and shortsightness of many – far too often, the Blues are not given the respect they deserve from the wider football world and if they don’t stick up for themselves, then nobody else is likely to on their behalf.
Whether it’s Premier League chief executive Richard Masters; then-Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez, after David Moyes’ Blues had the insolence to hold his side to an Anfield stalemate in 2006/07 having beat the Reds 3-0 earlier in the season rather than naively go gung-ho across Stanley Park and get thumped 4-0 (as happened twice to Roberto Martinez), or Dixon with his Pickford ‘observation’, Evertonians will not take kindly to any suggestions that theirs is a “small” football club and rightly so.
Thumbing through a magazine on football’s greatest stadiums when holidaying in France this summer, I was shocked and appalled not to find Goodison Park within its pages.
The first purpose-built football ground in England, venue for the most top flight matches and host for two FA Cup finals (the first English club ground to be bestowed such an honour), five World Cup matches (including a semi-final – the ONLY English club ground to be bestowed such an honour) plus the first English football ground to be visited by a reigning monarch, by any reasonable measure, this was a glaring omission.
Of course, this most recent generation has been the leanest in Everton’s history as they continue to endure their longest-ever trophy drought which of course now goes back over 30 years (surely no coincidence that this corresponded with the Grand Old Lady becoming no longer economically viable and falling behind so many of her rivals). But despite more than three decades of strife, both on and off the pitch, those loyal supporters continue to turn up in greater numbers than ever – hence the reference to “one of football’s most passionate fanbases.”
Although Everton enjoyed 16 attendances of over 70,000 at Goodison, including seven more than Arsenal’s record home crowd of 73,707 (and that was at the old Wembley for a Champions League game), they have only once enjoyed an average attendance north of 50,000 over a season with a figure of 51,603 for the 1962/63 title-winning campaign.
Therefore, with its 52,769 capacity, “a world-class new stadium,” as the Blues cited in their online response to Dixon, is enabling the Blues to play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history, so the club are also well within their rights to make their “big club: past, present and future remark.”
Brian Labone once boasted that Everton were “the biggest and the best” and “one Evertonian was worth 20 Liverpudlians,” but of course the boyhood Blue who got to live the dream could be accused of bias. So, what about those who didn’t grow up supporting the team but got to don the royal blue jersey?
Alan Ball was controversially sold to Arsenal but still acknowledged: “Once Everton has touched you, nothing will be the same.” Duncan Ferguson remarked: “When you play for Everton, you forget about the rest, the rest mean nothing.”
These two firebrands, like new idol Jack Grealish, wore their hearts on their sleeves and in many ways, passionate Pickford is cut from the same cloth. Who is Lee Dixon or anyone else to question that he should be playing for a supposedly “bigger” club?
But then we must also assume that the Mancunian pundit is not getting Everton mixed up with another team. Only last month, the 61-year-old left viewers perplexed by his on-air blunder when working on England’s 2-0 win over Andorra when he remarked of Elliot Anderson: “I saw him play against Leeds last week and he was absolutely brilliant in midfield for Newcastle.”
That must have been quite the feat given that Anderson didn’t even feature in that game. The reason being he was sold by the Magpies to Nottingham Forest over a year ago!