ROOKIE goalkeeper Jordan Pickford has been tipped to follow in the footsteps Joe Hart and Jack Butland all the way into the England squad.
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| Jordan Pickford will make his Sunderland debut against Arsenal in the FA Cup this weekend |
Local lad Pickford is regarded as Sunderland's most promising keeper since Jim Montgomery came through the ranks in the Sixties to notch up a record number of appearances for his hometown club.
And it's fitting that the same competition in which Monty earned legendary status for his 1973 heroics is the stage for the 21-year-old's first game for Sunderland, with him set to make his debut at Arsenal on Saturday in the FA Cup.
Pickford earned rave reviews during his loan spell at Preston earlier this season when he equalled a club record with six clean sheets.
"I don't want to put too much pressure on him because I haven't seen him play for us yet, but I watched him at Preston and he's following along the same lines as Hart and Butland," said Black Cats boss Sam Allardyce. "I hope he follows in their footsteps.
"He's a Sunderland boy and a Sunderland fan who has made such an outstanding impact there that it would have been wrong of me not to bring him back here and try him at some stage."
The England Under-21 keeper has been capped at every age group from the age of 16 and rattled up more than 100 first-team games during spells with Darlington, Alfreton, Burton, Carlisle and Bradford before his temporary move to Deepdale which was cut short last month.
And even though he has had to wait for his Black Cats debut, Allardyce has hinted it is only a matter of time before Pickford moves ahead of Vito Mannone and Costel Pantilimon to become No 1 at the club.
"His development through his own determination has been excellent," he said. "At Preston he played in every single game, won a load of man-of-the-match awards and earned loads of praise from the manager."
With a relegation six-pointer at Swansea on Wednesday, Allardyce will rely on his fringe players on Saturday. But Pickford has the chance to stake his claim for a permanent slot with either Pantilimon or Mannone likely to leave the club this month.
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| Pickford has really impressed with loan spells at Bradford and Preston in the last two seasons |
"There's more pressure on Costel and Vito to perform better," added Allardyce. "Somebody else is knocking on their door now.
"I don't know what will happen in the future but I do know Pickford won't be going anywhere, that's for sure. If there was to be an offer for either Costel or Vito, I'd probably call them in and ask them what they wanted to do."
Arsene Wenger is also looking to change keepers, with David Ospina handed the chance to redeem himself for his Champions League blunders.
The Gunners are chasing their third successive Cup win and, with the exception perhaps of Mesut Ozil, Wenger is expected to field his strongest possible outfield side today.
But Cech will be rested for the first time since he missed the game against Olympiacos in which Ospina's uncertainty led to a near-critical 3-2 home defeat.
"Ospina will play throughout the FA Cup," Wenger said. "True he had a bad season because he has that mistake against Olympiacos and when you do not have many opportunities and you have one bad catch, everyone is after you. If you look at his performances from January to the end of last season, he saved us in many games.
"Ospina is not treated fairly. If you look at the whole of 2015, everybody neglects he played six months. He is world class."
But having dubbed the Spaniard Arsenal's "goalkeeper of the future", Wenger explained that signing Cech was not a slight, merely too good an opportunity to miss.
"I did not take Petr Cech based on the performances of Ospina," he said. "Petr Cech was just an exceptional opportunity where it was difficult to say no. It was not because I was unhappy with Ospina but, unfortunately, Ospina has been punished by that decision.
"We are lucky because he has a top attitude, very intelligent, very brave, very quick, and his only difference from Cech is he has less experience and his size. Cech is so tall that when he stretches he covers more surface."
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