Olsen gives Everton options

There were precious few positives to take out of Sunday’s defeat for Everton at Newcastle United, but one was the performance of goalkeeper Robin Olsen.

The Roma keeper was only brought in on loan for the season on deadline day and the general feeling was that he would be a reserve for Everton to put some much-needed pressure on incumbent number one Jordan Pickford.

The performances of Pickford have been one of the most frustrating problems for the Toffees as the England man has continued to make eccentric and costly errors over the past few seasons.

It’s been a long-running debate as to whether Pickford should continue to wear the Blues goalkeeping jersey and if not, who might replace him if Everton are to challenge the top teams.

The Toffees were very strongly linked to a move for the Manchester United reserve stopper Sergio Romero before bringing in Olsen. The club apparently made an offer for the Argentine during their deadline day dealings, but the deal didn’t happen.

In the first games of the season Pickford continued to be manager Carlo Ancelotti’s first-choice despite showing yet again some of his characteristic lapses and fallibility, which culminated in that awfully miss-judged and reckless tackle on Virgil Van Dijk in the recent Merseyside derby.

That incident of course provoked a hysterical response from the media and resulted in death threats being made towards Pickford on social media.

Ancelotti rightly kept faith with his keeper for the following game at Southampton, as dropping him for that match might have seemed as if he had succumbed to media pressure.

Interestingly though, the Everton manager decided to give Olsen a chance for yesterday’s match at St James Park.

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Maybe Ancelotti actually considered dropping Pickford after his aberration against Liverpool but felt he couldn’t for the reasons above.

Whatever really motivated his decision, Olsen got his debut as the Toffees took on the Magpies and while his team mates hardly covered themselves in any glory, the Swedish stopper had a really solid and critically, an error-free game.

He made several excellent saves and was a strong presence between the sticks, although lets be honest in such a dire game he didn’t have that much to do.

The Blues have had plenty of bad news recently with a succession of injuries and suspensions and now two defeats in a row to put the brakes on their great start to the campaign.

Olsen’s fine debut is at least one positive and gives Ancelotti choice about who starts in goal for him while putting added pressure on Pickford to improve his game or possibly lose his place.