Darren Bent has told Sky Sports News (21/10/20 at 11:30 am) that someone like Seamus Coleman needs to tell his Everton teammate Jordan Pickford to ‘calm down’.
Everton’s number one has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons recently after his tackle injured and has now seemingly ended Virgil van Dijk’s season.
Pickford has received huge criticism for his tackle, which has seemingly left those on the red side of Merseyside still seething because of his actions.
Former Premier League striker Bent thinks Pickford just needs to ‘breathe’ and relax his game a little because he is going through a bad patch.
“The fundamentals of being a great goalkeeper, he does have the great shot-stopping ability,” Bent told Sky Sports. “Brilliant on the deck. He can kick the ball a mile and he has really good distribution.
“But it’s one of them where if you are one of his teammates your maybe the captain or Seamus Coleman, or somebody would have to go to him and say ‘just calm it down a little bit’.
“I am sure all his teammates in that dressing room will believe in him still. They know what a good goalkeeper he can be. But, at the moment, he is going through one of them periods where he needs to settle down, take a back step, breath and hopefully, he will be out of this situation.”
The added controversy around Pickford’s tackle on Van Dijk was the fact that those in the VAR room didn’t send him off, nor has he received punishment since.
Either way, these are now testing times for not only Everton’s number one but Gareth Southgate’s main man between the sticks.
The problem Pickford faces is that for some while now critics have been calling for him to be dropped, not just for his country, but for his club also.
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