Pickford did not deserve to be blamed – he was left exposed

Jordan Pickford was in the worst possible scenario when Adnan Januzaj cut inside to score Belgium’s winner against England on Thursday night. As a goalkeeper, your heart sinks if an attacker is allowed to open up like that, on their stronger foot. You simply stand there and think to yourself, “I’m in trouble”. You have the angle to cover at your near post, but the whole goal has also opened up for the attacker.

As soon as Januzaj was able to cut in, I thought it would be a goal. You are dead in the water, so you have to make a decision on whether to gamble, much like you would if you were facing a penalty.

Pickford (below) took off and dived a long way to his right, but everything changed because the ball bobbled as Januzaj took his shot. It was like he was striking it off a golf tee, and that altered the trajectory – it went further up and over Pickford, rather than round him as he would have anticipated.

That shows how hard it is for goalkeepers when the attacker is allowed to come inside like that. You are totally exposed.

The England goalkeeper was also criticised for pushing shots out into the middle of his penalty box, but Pickford is aware of what is happening around him. He has not palmed the ball straight into the path of the Belgium attackers on either occasion.

In a game where little happened, people need to find something to talk about. In many ways, Pickford was the victim of a boring match, because there was nothing else to analyse. I suffered the same problem playing for England.

Once, a colleague who was on the television punditry panel even texted me after the match to apologise, saying it was decided that they were going to take apart my performance. It can be remarkably unfair on goalkeepers.

For those who have never played in goal, they might as well be analysing the javelin. Overall, I saw nothing in Pickford’s performance to concern me. His distribution was good, he came out and caught crosses and he made the right decisions about when to pass the ball and when to clear it. If Januzaj’s goal had been scored by an England player, we would rightly be describing it as a fantastic strike. We would not be blaming Thibaut Courtois, the Belgium goalkeeper, for conceding it.