Get Pickford off - or I'll send him off!

Jordan Pickford developed his wind-up antics whilst playing school football, and (below) in action for Sunderland

- By CHRIS BEESLEY

ON Monday, Jordan Pickford returns to Sunderland for the first time since he became the most expensive goalkeeper in British football in 2017 by joining Everton in a £25million transfer.

But his old PE teacher recalls that the England number one used to score goals rather than save them for his school team.

Pickford, who won his 80th cap for the Three Lions in a 5-0 win in Latvia last month as Thomas Tuchel's side became the first European nation to qualify for next summer's World Cup finals, extended the sequence for the longest ever run without conceding by an England goalkeeper - having surpassed Gordon Banks' 59-year record in the previous game against Wales - while he had already overtaken Peter Shilton for the most clean sheets in major tournaments.

Back when Pickford was a pupil under Jim Welch at St Robert of Newminster Catholic School in his home town of Washington, he was a prolific performer in the centre of the park.

Mr Welch, 71, told the ECHO: "I played him in midfield. You could get away with it in schoolboy football and put anyone in goal as he would have been wasted in goal and he wanted to play out as well.