Jordan Pickford has bailed Everton out so many times during his time at the club, but currently one of his data metrics is rather alarming.

Jordan Pickford has had a bit of a mixed start to the new season so far. He’s been ever-present for the Toffees, appearing in every Premier League game as expected, but also starting both Carabao Cup games.

He has three clean sheets to his name, with only Bart Verbruggen and David Raya having more so far.

He won Premier League Save of the Month for August, which was great to see and Pickford’s early form was good. But some have asked questions of him about a few of the goals conceded, such as Hull City’s second by Mohamed Belloumi and Chelsea’s first by Pedro Neto.

But at the moment, there’s one part of his game that is really doing Everton no favours.

Jordan Pickford’s long passing must improve for Everton as data emerges

Some have remarked recently that Pickford’s distribution has been a bit wayward.

Against Chelsea, as per Sofascore, he registered a final pass completion rate of just 59% (17/32). But his long ball accuracy was particularly poor – he only found a teammate five times from his 20 attempts, giving an accuracy of just 25%.

And actually, this has been a bit of a problem for Pickford this season.

Fotmob data shows that Pickford’s long passing accuracy so far in 2026/27 is just 29.4% in the Premier League. For perspective, last season it was 39.7% and in both 2024/25 and 2023/24 it was 41%.

So for the moment, Pickford is considerably down from where it usually tends to be, and that’s a problem for Everton.

29% equates to Pickford giving the ball away on seven out of 10 long balls he plays. So for the most part, rather than starting attacks for the Toffees, he is giving the opposition a chance to start one of their own and apply pressure.

Given David Moyes likes to play with a direct style, it’s unlikely we are going to see Pickford stop trying long balls. So with that said, he has to start finding a teammate more often and increasing his accuracy.

Not only does turning the ball over with a long pass potentially lead to an opposition attack, but it’s also something that frustrates the crowd. And unsettling the crowd doesn’t really help cohesion on the pitch.

Encouragingly, though, Pickford is joint-fifth for highest save percentage in the Premier League, alongside Gianluigi Donnarumma and David Raya and behind only James Trafford, Konstantinos Tzolakis and Bart Verbruggen. He has a goals prevented xG of 0.8, ranking him ninth in the league.

He’s largely doing the most important thing for a goalkeeper quite well, so it’d be most welcome if he could just improve that long distribution.