With Pickford’s saves and a fiery Goodison, there is fight in Everton yet

Jordan Pickford departed Goodison Park on Sunday evening with nothing. He had left it all on the pitch.

The Everton goalkeeper’s performance could yet be the definitive moment of their fight for Premier League survival.

First, and perhaps best, was his save from Cesar Azpilicueta.

Pickford is often criticised for hyperactivity, for running on emotion (at times over-emotion), but his fizzing energy, combined with immaculate focus, made all the difference in this instance. The 28-year-old dived to his left to try to keep out a Mason Mount shot, the ball struck one post before zipping across the goal, hitting the other one and pinballing out to the Chelsea captain.

Pickford had the awareness to crane his neck after his dive, following the trajectory of the ball along the line and realising it had stayed in play. So in a split second, despite regaining his feet in a slightly awkward position and facing the crowd not the play, he was sprinting across goal in time to be in the right position to stop Azpilicueta’s shot.

It could be the most important eight-yard dash he has made in his club career.

His next save, from Antonio Rudiger, was less about prescience and more about sheer bravery. About putting his physical safety on the line to deny the Chelsea defender at point-blank range as he seemed certain to score from the resulting corner.

The collision with Rudiger left Pickford sprawled out, his head ringing, but he was not down for long — he was back up, and dousing himself in water, before an appreciative crowd had finished applauding.

Later, there would be a sublime one-handed save to push Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s curling goalbound effort over the bar. Then another crucial stop in added time from Mateo Kovacic.

It was fitting that Pickford, as seven heart-stopping minutes of stoppage time came to an end, had the game’s last touch; booting the ball high into the air to the blessed sound of referee Kevin Friend’s final whistle. That kick was the palpable release of enormous pent-up pressure, Pickford as aware as anyone about what was at stake while Chelsea pushed for something from this contest.

Yerry Mina, his partner in invincibility, was first to celebrate with him before the keeper turned to applaud the fans, who had made such a monumental difference.

It was little surprise that Duncan Ferguson made a beeline for Pickford from the dug-out, smothering him in a hug, before Seamus Coleman whispered words of praise in his ear in another embrace.

It had been a goalkeeping display Goodson is unlikely to forget. The sort of improbable heroics rarely seen since Neville Southall’s days.

If Everton are to stay up over the next three weeks, Pickford’s saves here will likely have been pivotal — but so too will the atmosphere and energy created by the supporters before, during and after this win.

The club’s fan forum has called for a siege mentality in the build-up, and the decision to greet the team coach as it arrived at the stadium at noon had a tangible impact.

It had begun in the early hours of Sunday, when some let off fireworks outside the city-centre hotel where Thomas Tuchel, his players and staff were staying. The Chelsea head coach admitted post-match that he was woken briefly by the noise at 1am and again at 3am. Midfielder Jorginho also acknowledged the disruption.

It is impossible to quantify the difference such mischief-making may have made to the visiting side, who had played against Manchester United on Thursday night, in terms of interrupted sleep, but in a game of fine margins and incremental gains, with such an emphasis on physical rest before competition, it cannot have helped.

Such dark arts are usually reserved for cup finals, and to embrace the old cliche, each of Everton’s remaining home games feels like one.

The noise and colour generated by the fans’ welcome to the team were so intense even veteran club staff were surprised. The air on Goodison Road was thick with the smell of blue flares, and in fitting symmetry, one supporter even hoisted his pet German Shepherd into the air to add its barks to the commotion.

It was clear — this game was going to be a dog fight.

Over to the players next, and Coleman helped set the tone of (mostly) controlled aggression early — shoving Rudiger into the ground after the centre-back had fouled him early on.

His team-mates followed suit, creating the type of physical tone that sucked Chelsea into a scrap and interrupted their game plan. The Londoners are not an especially angsty group but by half-time they had collected three bookings, and by the end it was five. Kai Havertz looked constantly irked — was it a lack of sleep? — and the crowd merrily played their part in the mind games.

Fans in the Gwladys Street refused to give the ball back to Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy after a passage of play when the visitors had sportingly put the ball out after Richarlison went down with cramp. From the re-start, Everton fired it into the crowd behind Mendy instead of to him, and he had to climb over the hoardings to plead for its return. Such is the severity of Everton’s plight, manners can wait.

Everton did a number on Chelsea — physically and psychologically — but there was also more than that. The hard work from the hosts was not tokenistic, it was focused — and reserved for the right moments.

“My only worry,” said manager Frank Lampard afterwards, discussing the atmosphere, “is that it would mean people would run for the sake of it and against Chelsea you can’t, because they will play around you. The discipline was great, the work rate was great.”

To the credit of Lampard and his team, Everton’s shape was airtight as they found the right balance. Every player toiled but rarely broke from the tightly-drilled system they needed to contain opponents with such technical prowess and pace.

Yes, Everton pressed hard — but it was done at the right moments and never more effectively than Richarlison’s attempts to close down Azpiliceuta, which resulted in one of the game’s most experienced players losing possession to gift the Brazilian his deserved goal.

Burnley’s 2-1 comeback win over Watford on Saturday was a psychological blow to Everton. Lampard watched it with two of his staff and broached the result with his players on Sunday morning “to make sure there wasn’t a fear, a lack of hope, because of the points difference”.

Everton, kicking off in the bottom three and five points off safety, simply had to respond to that result at Vicarage Road. This victory was the perfect answer and could gnaw at the nerves of fourth-bottom Leeds United, now two points ahead having played a game more, in a similar manner.

“I think it was an important moment to talk about the reality of the situation,” Lampard said, explaining how he prodded his players before this battle, swapping positive affirmations for a dose of hard reality. Time, after all, is running out.

“You can keep telling the players to believe,” he said. “There are other times when the demands are (playing like) this. To be good lads is not enough to stay in this league. It is clear what the table looks like. My feeling was we needed an extra boost, an extra bit of attention, and to be fair, the players delivered that.”

They undoubtedly delivered, and so too did Goodison, that snarling, spiteful, weird and wonderful bane of opposing players providing its own unparalleled power.

Twenty-four hours after hope took a severe dent when Burnley came from 1-0 down with eight minutes to go to beat Watford, it was restored.

With Pickford’s saves and Goodison as saviour — there’s fight in the old dog yet.

(Top photo: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)