Really, really important football ‘news’…
Jordan Pickford might well have thought he was doing no harm in posting a picture of his fancy new Xbox controller to Twitter on Friday night. In actual fact, he was… at least as far as a few Everton supporters were concerned.
The controller, seemingly sent to him as a gift, was entirely red – the colour of Everton’s rivals from across Stanley Park. And as those of us who remember the uproar over Ronald Koeman’s Christmas baubles know only too well, this is the kind of thing that won’t be tolerated by some staunch Evertonians.
Though the tweet was obviously innocent enough and clearly nothing to do with Liverpool, it was later deleted by the England international, probably because of some of the replies it was attracting.
Poor Jordan.
Pickford received the backing of manager Marco Silva ahead of Everton’s game with Chelsea this weekend after enduring a difficult afternoon at Newcastle last weekend.
His connection with Sunderland saw him targeted by the crowd at St James’ Park, something which appeared to have an impact on his performance in the 3-2 loss.
“We knew before the match, he knew also when he played there at Newcastle, that the atmosphere is always not the same to him,” Silva said. I remember when he played here at home against Newcastle what the fans of Newcastle tried to do with him and he answered well.
“I understand everything that people are saying about Jordan. Jordan has all my confidence, like Maarten [Stekelenburg] and João Virginia, our goalkeepers. What I want in Jordan is to keep working in the same way with the same desire, improving what we have to improve with him, with more emotional balance in some moments if he can. We as a team have to be different also. If you look at the goals we conceded we must do different in that moment.”
