Jordan Pickford or Aaron Ramsdale? The stats behind the England number one dilemma facing Gareth Southgate

The old adage goes that you have to be a little bit mad to be a goalkeeper. To be a goalkeeper in the age of social media, however, you must have to be certifiably insane.
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Resisting the constant salvo of bandwagon-hopping pile-ons, usually orchestrated by armchair analysts who themselves could barely save a Word document, surely requires the kind of mental fortitude that many of us simply cannot imagine.

And few players are as relentlessly scrutinised as Jordan Pickford.

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On any given day in the sunlit meadows of Football Twitter, you could, if you so desired, choose to wade through a veritable lahar of unprovoked outburts accusing the England number one of being some kind of shot-stopping fraud with anger management issues and little arms.

Inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rexes have even started appearing in away ends behind Pickford’s goal on the regular, because if there’s one thing football fans love more than anything else it’s latching onto a joke and wringing the life out of it until it lies purple-faced and twitching in a pool of its own blood.

Last night, mouths started frothing once more after the 28-year-old failed to keep out Germany’s opener in a 1-1 draw in Munich.

In fairness, Pickford himself will probably feel he could have done better with Jonas Hoffman’s second-half strike. The purity of the contact and the pace it generated did the England stopper few favours, but it was still pretty much straight at him. Saving it would have required a good intervention, but it would also be the kind of intervention that Pickford would back himself to make more often than not.

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Shades of grey matter not on social media, however, and within moments, the timeline was ablaze with demands for the Everton star to be forcibly removed from his post and, if wholly possible, strapped to a trebuchet with view to catapulting him into the sun - or at the very least, out of Gareth Southgate’s plans.

Presumably, it would then be the turn of Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale to prostrate himself for a stint of public flagellation.

But heading into this winter’s World Cup, would he genuinely be a better option between the sticks than Pickford?

In a break from accepted convention, we’ve decided to put aside the pitchfork of emotion to instead evaluate the debate using these mad new things called “stats”. Whether they will ever actually catch on is anybody’s guess.

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So without further ado, here’s how Pickford and Ramsdale compare when it comes to shot-stopping, distribution, and a smattering of the other boring, nitty-gritty aspects of football’s most thankless endeavour, goalkeeping.

Shot-stopping

When all is said and done, it’s a goalkeeper’s job to keep the old pig’s bladder out of the ruddy onion bag.

Quite aside from the fact that for a keeper to be called into action, something must have gone awry for the ten lads in front of him, the simple fact of the matter is that - like a Friday afternoon meeting at Downing Street - shots are an inevitability.

In that regard, Pickford and Ramsdale have both enjoyed their own purple patches this season.

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Towards the beginning of the campaign, the latter often performed like the illegitimate love child of Doctor Octopus and a brick wall, and towards the end of it, the former was arguably the largest single contributing factor in Everton’s improbable escape from the quicksand pull of relegation.

Over the course of the season as a whole, however, the numbers would seem to suggest that Ramsdale did edge out Pickford in the shot-stopping stakes.

In 2021/22, the Arsenal man conceded 42 goals from an xCG of 40.64 across all competitions, meaning that he let in just 1.36 goals more than he was reasonably expected to.

By contrast, Pickford shipped 69 goals from an xCG of 60.92 - a difference of 8.08 goals.

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Now, it is worth reiterating that the Everton number one also faced 63 shots more than Ramsdale, but even taking that factor into account, the disparity is startling.

If Pickford does have one redemptive argument to be made in his favour, however, it’s that the saves he does produce tend to of a higher difficulty, on average.

Of the 139 stops he made last season, 55.4% called for some kind of reflex reaction. Compare that figure to Ramsdale, who made 103 saves at an inferior reflex reaction rate of 50.5%. And yeah, reflex reaction rate is a term we just made up on the spot.

Distribution

Ever since Pep Guardiola - in a blatant middle finger to the accepted teachings of medical science - discovered that goalkeepers actually do have feet, there’s been a dawning, epiphanic realistation in English football that the man between the sticks and his contributions in possession are not merely the preserve of straight-to-DVD gag reels voiced by Danny Dyer.

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Pickford’s distribution has always been an asset that his proponents have crowed about frequently - often even in spite of a bulging archive of visual evidence to the contrary.

But, in fairness, the stats would suggest that he does just about outclass Ramsdale with the ball at his feet.

Last season, Pickford made 510 long passes with a success rate of 64.9%. By comparison, his England colleague made 339 long passes with a completion rate of 60.5%.

The pattern isn’t just limited to punts downfield, either - Pickford’s short pass accuracy was 1.1% better than Ramsdale’s too.

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Whether those differences are vast enough to constitute anything meaningful in Southgate’s eyes is a matter that only he himself will know, but there we have it.

Exits

Not the kind amateur magicians employ using smoke-bombs and hastily-dropped velveteen tablecloths, but rather the technical term for a goalkeeper coming off their line to deal with long balls and deliveries into the area.

This one is a pretty straight shoot-out that Ramsdale edges by 71 to 65 - a disparity made all the more interesting by the fact that Pickford actually faced more crosses per game last season.

To an extent, that may be more of a reflection on Everton’s willingness to attack the ball in defensive areas, but at the very least, it would suggest that Ramsdale is no slouch in aerial situations.

A certain ‘je ne sais quois’

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This, ultimately, could be the factor that swings Southgate’s decision one way or the other as we hurtle towards Qatar like a gnat approaching a people carrier windscreen.

Pickford is not without his flaws, granted, but by and large, he turns up for England in the big moments.

Rarely does he put a foot wrong to a genuinely calamitous degree, and it’s been regularly cited that Southgate’s tenure with the national side is notable for its willingness to forgive questionable form at club level if international performances are still up to scratch.

Just ask Harry Maguire, who spent most of last season playing with the poise and dexterity of a haunted wardrobe, but who still gets into the Three Lions’ starting XI ahead of, say, actual Serie A winner Fikayo Tomori.

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By that metric, has Pickford truly done enough to lose his spot in the eyes of the manager? Probably not.

And while Ramsdale continues to hint at his own credentials on a weekly basis, the reality is - like it or loathe it - it’s going to take an awful lot for his compatriot to relinquish his number one jersey between now and November.

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