Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford attached a 'penalty cheat sheet' to his water bottle for Monday night's Premier League clash with Liverpool.
Everton ended up losing the fixture 2-0 after Mo Salah and Cody Gakpo found the back of the net for Jurgen Klopp's side.
Salah took advantage of Pickford's poor positioning to score Liverpool's opening goal of the game in the 36th minute.
While, Gakpo executed a back pot tap-in to get his first goal for Klopp's side after signing from PSV Eindhoven for £45million.
Despite both goals coming from open play, Pickford would have felt confident between the sticks for any potential penalties.
Pickford had adequately prepared for such an eventuality and added a penalty cheat sheet to his water bottle.
The 28-year-old wrote notes about Salah, Gakpo, Darwin Nunez and James Milner. Those notes included stats on their preferred side and details about their run-ups.
According to Pickford's notes, Nunez, Milner and Gakpo all target the goalkeeper's left-hand-side more than 60 per cent of the time.
Salah favour's the same area but he is more unpredictable - selecting the middle 13.3 per cent of the time and the right 33.3 per cent of the time.
Pickford added serval pointers to his notes, telling himself to 'check' Salah's 'run up' and 'wait right' before diving to save Nunez's spot-kick.
His notes for Milner and Gakpo were short and sweet. He wrote 'check run up' for the Liverpool captain and 'GK left' for the club's new signing.
This is not the first time Pickford has added notes to his water bottle. The 28-year-old goalkepeer used the same trick during the 2020 Euro final at Wembley.
Sportsmail pictured Pickford checking the bottle before the penalties took place, but from the angle of the images, none of the players listed took a spot-kick.
Alessandro Florenzi, Giacomo Raspadori, Rafael Toloi, Bryan Cristante, Francesco Acerbi, Alessandro Bastoni and Gianluigi Donnarumma were all listed on one side of Pickford's bottle.
However, it was Dominico Berardi, Andrea Belotti, Leonardo Bonucci, Federico Bernardeschi and Jorginho who were selected to take Italy's penalties, with Pickford saving from Belotti and Jorginho.
Pickford dived low to his left to deny Belotti, before correctly going to his right to keep out Jorginho, who is so often ruthless from the spot.
But sadly for England, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were unable to convert their efforts and England were defeated 3-2.
Back in the 2018 World Cup, Pickford made a superb save from Carlos Bacca to help England progress into the last eight of the tournament.
The England goalkeeper appeared to have notes on his bottle then too, although wrapped it up in a towel so it was harder to spot.
Pickford later said of his save: 'Well, I know the whole country wanted me to save it, so hopefully I put some happy faces on people on their way to work.
'I did a bit of research and we knew Bacca was maybe a weak link on the penalties because we had watched previous ones.'
Fitbcklmnr
8
it is normal for Pickford to do that. it is part of his assignment.