So i have had the night to calm down & think rationally about Pickford. The first Newcastle goal he gets out jumped by Lejeune from the corner. His feet, head & shoulders are all below Lejeune's at the point of contact so his arms are compromised as they cant be fully engaged so operation flap at the ball commences. The defence has given Pickford the room to claim but as operation flappy hands failed you can clearly see the void left as Pickford scrambles back to his line so Lejeune has all the space to connect with the returned ball. In other words, all faith put in Pickford to deal with it & he failed so we failed.
On the second goal he is let down by several poor errors by his teammates. Tom let a ball from the first ball in go over him which pulled Holgate out but more importantly made Mina sprint across the box to get a block in. This sprint left another huge void in the box leaving Newcastle to get thier shot in to start the scramble. Pickford dives for the first shot like Mina sprinted to try to block a cross. Both instant reactions that a defender & a goalkeeper do. What i don't get is why Pickford then takes 2 steps backwards into his goal. What purpose does that serve? Without that the shot gets saved or ricochets away or whatever.
In the lead up to both goals there are clear outfield playing errors & we can go in on Tom etc in thier threads but Pickford lacked basic goalkeeping ability in the first goal (in my opinion every goalkeeper should be out jumping a striker as a fundamental rule of goalkeeping) & then basic positional awareness for the 2nd goal.
Should he be more protected? Or should he be more protective !!!!
