Jordan Pickford furious with Everton pair after incident at Nottingham Forest
Jordan Pickford exploded at his defenders as Everton almost shot themselves in the foot in the second half against Nottingham Forest.
Leading 1-0 through James Garner‘s excellently-taken first-half opener, against his former club, the visitors to City Ground were largely weathering the hosts’ attempts to fight back with ease.
James Tarkowski headed away numerous crosses and if anything got past him then Jake O’Brien picked up the slack.
But after repelling Forest advances for the best part of an hour the Everton back line then came close to handing the home side their equaliser through Igor Jesus, to the fury of Pickford.
Everton ultimately completed an excellent 2-0 win thanks to Thierno Barry‘s late goal, but it could have been very different in Forest’s former Botafogo man had been able to net the equaliser.
Jordan Pickford enraged by Igor Jesus chance
Forest attacked down the right flank in the 59th minute and a ball was played forward towards Morgan Gibbs-White near the byline.
But as O’Brien closed and looked ready to calmly shepherd the ball out of play the big Irishman instead somehow let the ball through his legs and panicked.
He and Vitalii Mykolenko then couldn’t decide between them whether to let the ball go behind, and O’Brien instead booted the ball at Garner in the area.
Tim Ireogbunam then failed to clear the loose ball to allow Jesus to seize on it and poke narrowly wide of the far post as Pickford raced out of goal to berate his defence, as relayed by the Liverpool Echo’s Joe Thomas on X.
James Garner makes transfer exit impossible
Despite the one slip-up that nearly undid so much good work and so infuriated Pickford the club ultimately played out an excellent away win.
Tarkowski was superb at the centre of defence, with O’Brien largely an able deputy, while Barry scoring his second Everton goal, again vs Sean Dyche’s side, will delight supporters.
But most significant is bound to be Garner’s game-changing show from midfield, where the Englishman scored a perfectly-taken opener and then laid on the second for Barry.
Man United are considering a move to take Garner back to Old Trafford and with the Toffees hoping to sign him to a new deal he has surely made it far easier for The Friedkin Group to justify giving him what he wants.
The Everton owners would have suffered a big blow to lose Garner at this stage, and the ex-Forest loanee has probably made it impossible to let him escape.
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