For much of this 2025/26 season, Jordan Pickford has continued to showcase his incredible ability to produce world-class saves at key moments in matches.
The Washington-born stopper’s love and affection for his home club Sunderland however is not a secret. At every Everton game, we are told he is both a Mackem and a Blue (and that he has no time for either club’s closest rivals). Moreover, at the Stadium of Light earlier this season, his son Arlo walked out as mascot wearing a half-and-half shirt. However, Everton’s current custodian isn’t the only goalkeeper in our history to have a close connection with the Black Cats. A word of warning here – not every story that follows is quite as cheerful or bouncy as our Jordan’s character and disposition.
Signed from Football Alliance side Sunderland Albion in April 1890, Scotsman John ‘Jack’ Angus started 11 of the first 12 games of Everton’s title-winning 1890/91 season. In the Liverpool Mercury, he received high praise for his performance in a 2-2 draw at Villa Park that autumn – particularly for ‘fisting out rather cleverly a beautiful shot from the left’. However, after a dip in form, Angus was replaced in the team by new signing David Jardine towards the end of November. After losing his place, he would make just one more appearance for the club – in a 0-1 FA Cup loss to Sunderland in January 1891. Ironically, his last clean sheet for Everton also came against Sunderland – in the Toffees’ 1-0 win at Anfield two months earlier.
Tragically, just over six months after the Blues’ FA Cup exit, Angus died after contacting typhoid fever while back in Scotland. The Sunderland Echo paid the following tribute to the late goalkeeper: ‘Although only 24 years of age, Angus was a player of ripe experience, and as a goalkeeper he had few superiors. He rarely allowed high shots to pass him; if he had a weakness, it was for low shots, which sometimes puzzled him. Tall and strong, Angus was in appearance a model goalkeeper, and his genial disposition won for him lots of friends in Sunderland, among whom there have been many expressions of regret at his demise.’
After gaining a reputation as a penalty-saving expert at Grimsby Town, where he became the first goalkeeper to save three penalties in one game (and saved 14 of the 17 spot-kicks he faced in the 1908/09 campaign), Worksop-born Walter Scott made the switch to Goodison Park in January 1910 for a fee of £750. He played in the final eight games of his first season on Merseyside, after namesake Billy Scott suffered a nasty hand injury in the FA Cup semi-final defeat to Barnsley. Incredibly, Everton’s new stopper repeated his penalty-saving heroics of the previous term in just his third game for the Blues, keeping out Henry Low’s spot-kick in a 1-0 victory over Sunderland at Roker Park.
However, having failed to get much of a look-in on Merseyside, the agile custodian moved to Sunderland in July 1911 for the same £750 fee that Everton had paid Grimsby Town for his services. Sadly, he endured a miserable spell in the north-east and had his contract terminated by the Sunderland directors for ‘palpable inefficiency’ four weeks into the 1912/13 season. Following his exit, Scott spent time in Ireland with Shelbourne, and represented the Irish Football League on five occasions. He would later sign for Worksop Town, Gainsbrough Trinity and Grimsby Town. During the First World War, he also guested for Millwall Athletic and Brentford.
The link between Ted Sagar and Sunderland could be deemed a little tenuous but for me his choosing of the classic FA Cup tie between Everton and Sunderland in 1935 as his favourite-ever game is worthy of inclusion here. After all, Ted made 497 appearances between the posts and kept an impressive 120 clean sheets. So for him to choose a game in which he conceded four goals has always struck me as quite odd – but also indicates just how good a game that must have been (read all about it and the two bonkers matches between the two clubs over Christmas that season in Joe Brennan’s excellent article in the official matchday programme for this season’s FA Cup fixture, dated 10.1.26).
But back to Sagar’s thoughts on the game. He told the Liverpool Echo: ‘I have been asked frequently what was my most memorable game. The answer to that is easy. Without hesitation I say the 1935 FA Cup replay against Sunderland at Goodison Park, a view to which the 59,215 spectators who saw it will probably subscribe. Think of all the superlative adjectives that can be applied to a football game, and you will do it only adequate justice. Former international stars who were present at the game and who have spent a life-time in football, said they had never seen anything to approach that historic struggle. Thrill following thrill and goals came upon goals. At the end, hundreds of spectators in their excitement surged on to the pitch and mobbed both teams as we struggled to the dressing rooms, and the police had to come to our aid to enable us to make our way, one by one, down the subway. I think the players were as excited as the spectators and it was a game that will be talked about for years to come by football fans, who will be proud to say, “I was there” and who, in turn will hand the story down to succeeding generations.’
This season’s cup tie was about as far removed as you can get from the 1935 game. Two under-strength, tired-looking sides were never going to serve up a classic, and I cannot imagine any Evertonian boasting about being in attendance at the Hill Dickinson Stadium on 10 January 2026 in years to come. However, the beauty of the FA Cup is that there’s always next year, and therefore another opportunity for Jordan Pickford to join Messrs Scott, Sagar, West and Southall on the list of Everton Football Club’s FA Cup-winning goalkeepers. Dynamite and all that.
Paul Owens
