In the week of his 19th birthday a callow keeper took the gloves for Alfreton Town at Wrexham; a late winter day in 2013, full-blooded Conference football, the famous Racecourse Ground. It was the kid’s first away game for a club he had recently joined on loan. Wrexham had big, gnarly, intimidating strikers in Dele Adebola and Brett Ormerod, and knew what to do. “I remember a corner when they put seven players on top of me,” said Jordan Pickford. He failed to claim it, so Wrexham crowded him again. But, “The second one, I came and took the ball. And then they ran away. It’s all about game management. You can’t be frightened. You only get one chance.”

A similar story involved Pickford’s first