Jordan Pickford, ‘the best save I’ve ever seen’ & his Newcastle-baiting Yeboah moment | OneFootball

A great goalkeeper is worth [insert inordinately high number of points here] per season. And sometimes a striker just needs one to go in off their arse.

Jordan Pickford and Thierno Barry are nothing more than walking cliches, enduring proof that David Moyes has been doing this long and brilliantly enough that he is now able to deconstruct the game as we know it and manipulate it to his will.

Some platitudes can be redundant: you don’t always have to beat the first man from a corner if Jarrad Branthwaite is ghosting in at the front post. But Everton’s simplicity is effective.

That is certainly the case on the road. Everton are eighth despite not having won at the Hill Dickinson Stadium since December 6, such is the majesty of their away form.

Only Arsenal (29) have accrued more away points this season than the Toffees (24), who only four years ago were being openly and publicly taunted about their travel sickness by Sean Dyche.

“I said at half-time ‘I’m not sure these know how to win a game lads, away from home particularly’,” the ever-magnanimous Burnley manager explained in April 2022.

“I said we have to play on that,” he added, having come from behind to beat Frank Lampard’s side 3-2.

Perhaps Moyes delivered a similar team talk in the bowels of St James’ Park before securing victory by the same scoreline; the Newcastle fortress is in ruins and Everton took full advantage, a strong team performance underpinned by Pickford’s standard heroics.

Branthwaite called it “the best save I’ve ever seen”. Eddie Howe said it was “one of the best saves I’ve seen live”. Moyes described it as “out of this world”.

Far, far more importantly, Richard Keys had “just seen save of the season”. And Andy Gray almost definitely offered an immediate one-word affirmation to that assertion.

It was exceptional, a stoppage-time save worthy of a moment’s Gallowgate-baiting, arm-flexing and performative head-pointing from a player who often attracts – and perhaps invites – a far higher proportion of unwarranted ridicule than deserved praise.

And it was a welcome inversion of the trope that goals always look better if they go in off the crossbar, overdue proof that saves are improved by going out off the woodwork too.

Pickford will presumably embrace his casting as the Tony Yeboah of goalkeepers with characteristic relish as Everton finally give him something close to a team that can back up his individual brilliance.