Jordan Pickford makes bizarre claim in wake of England’s humiliation at Wembley

The Everton goalkeeper was one of many to have a night to forget against the Greeks but still insists Lee Carsley’s side controlled the game

Jordan Pickford claimed the football England played in the embarrassing defeat to Greece at Wembley was ‘good’ and that Lee Carsley’s controversial system worked well for large parts of the game.

And the Everton goalkeeper, whose own performance was distinctly erratic, made one of the understatements of the season when he said: “I think we were a little bit open.”

As one of the senior players and a member of the leadership group, Pickford, 30, faced the music after the startling loss but refused to admit it had been one of England’s worst displays for some considerable time. Pickford said: “Sometimes in football it becomes a bit weird because a couple of scruffy passes actually gets you out and gets us countered quite quickly – and Greece did that a few times.

“They played the long ball and won probably second balls more than we won and that might have been the difference. But the football we played was good . We weren’t far off. It was only two or three transitions in which we got caught. Apart from that we controlled it.

“We knew they were going to have transitions and it’s about us getting back into shape. And we did it for large parts of the evening and a couple of times we got caught.”

A couple of times? England were repeatedly carved open by the Greeks as they failed to get to grips with Carsley’s tactics. The interim England manager admitted that they had only worked on his gameplay for 20 minutes on the training ground and Pickford confirmed the build-up had been far from ideal, saying: “We’ve not had long to get ourselves ready. People played Sunday so they had to recover properly because everyone’s played a lot of games over the last month.”

But Pickford knows England need to produce a bounce-back showing in Helsinki this weekend. He went on: “It’s never nice for a player or staff to get beat at Wembley. The manager picked the team and we’ve just got to try and execute the game plan.

“We didn’t get it fully right and we got beat. Now we’ve just got to go and win away on Sunday against Finland and then the next camp in Greece away and Ireland at home.”

And Pickford also hinted that he agreed with the obvious observation that the team will need a bit more balance going into the last three games of its Nations League campaign. He said: “We want to give the fans enjoyment but also we want to be solid at the back, keep clean sheets and give that platform to go and let the attacking style come out on top.”

And the line-up for the game in Finland is likely to be more conventional as Harry Kane returns to the team. “Harry’s not the record goal scorer for England and have 100 caps for nothing,” said Pickford. “He leads by example and I think Harry will be fit to go Sunday.”

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