Shay Given Questions Silence Surrounding Jordan Pickford Transfer
Shay Given has seen enough elite goalkeeping to know when something doesn’t add up. What puzzles him now isn’t a mistake or a dip in form. It’s the silence.
Jordan Pickford, England’s long-standing No.1 and Everton’s last line of resistance for the best part of a decade, moves through transfer windows with barely a whisper around his name. For a keeper with his résumé, that feels odd to Given.
Speaking on behalf of BOYLE Sports, the former Newcastle and Manchester City goalkeeper laid it out plainly: Pickford has been at Everton for nearly 10 years, has worn the England shirt as first choice for most of that spell, and has already broken the record for England World Cup appearances by a goalkeeper. Yet the usual summer carousel barely brushes past him.
Given can’t quite square it.
There is always a market for top goalkeepers. Clubs reshuffle, managers demand new profiles, agents circle. Most summers, there’s a “goalkeeper merry-go-round”, as Given put it, the same way there is with managers. Big clubs sniff around, one move triggers another, and the chain reaction begins.
Pickford, somehow, stands outside that chaos.
Maybe the explanation is simple. Maybe he is just settled on Merseyside. Given acknowledged that nobody outside the inner circles truly knows how many bids, if any, have been lodged for Pickford over the years. Deals can die quietly. Enquiries can go nowhere. But the lack of noise still jars when set against his performances.
He is 32. That number stopped Given in his tracks. With the mileage on Pickford’s clock – the tournaments, the pressure, the weekly strain of keeping Everton afloat – you could easily mistake him for a veteran in his mid-thirties. Given himself moved to Manchester City at 33 and knows from experience that keepers often sharpen rather than fade with age.
Pickford, then, should be entering his prime years, not drifting under the radar.
Given name-checked Chelsea as the type of club you would expect to be all over him. In his view, they would “be on the phone tomorrow” and “jump at the chance” if Pickford ever offered the slightest hint he was open to moving. That is the level of goalkeeper we are talking about here: one decisive call from the player, and the landscape could change overnight.
The respect in Given’s voice sharpened when he recalled specific moments. One in particular stuck with him – a stunning stop from Sandro Tonali at St James’ Park last season, when Pickford flung himself to tip the ball over the crossbar. It was the sort of save that doesn’t just protect a result, it announces a goalkeeper’s class to anyone still doubting it.
“Unbelievable,” was Given’s verdict. The kind of intervention, he said, that Pickford “has in his locker”.
Yet the praise wasn’t dressed up in hyperbole. Given reached for a phrase that might sound faint at first glance but, in goalkeeping circles, is about as high as it gets: Pickford, he said, is a “Steady Eddie”.
That is not a dig. Far from it. Given stressed he was “playing him up”, not down. A steady goalkeeper, in a league this unforgiving, is gold. It means reliability. It means a manager sleeps easier. It means defenders trust the man behind them when the game starts to tilt.
Pickford brings more than safe hands. He brings personality. Edge. A visible, sometimes volatile competitiveness that splits opinion but never leaves a match untouched. Given recognises that some people feel his emotions can spill over, that the passion occasionally boils rather than simmers.
He doesn’t see that as a flaw.
To him, it’s a window into Pickford’s will to win – something you cannot coach, cannot manufacture, cannot fake. Hunger, desire, that raw drive for the team to do well: those are traits you either have or you don’t. Pickford has them, loudly.
Given is comfortable with that, and he suspects most managers would be too.
So the question lingers. How does a goalkeeper who has anchored England through major tournaments, carried Everton through storms, and produced “phenomenal” saves on some of the biggest stages, glide through summer after summer without his name dominating the rumour mill?
If the silence ever breaks and Pickford does so much as hint at a new chapter, the scramble for his signature will answer that better than any theory.
