James Trafford has set his sights on being England’s number one at next year’s World Cup.
The 22-year-old ex-Wanderers goalkeeper has been included in new manager Thomas Tuchel’s first squad for qualifiers against Albania and Latvia in the coming days.
Now starring for Burnley, Trafford has proved almost unbeatable for the Clarets in their quest for promotion to the Premier League, keeping 27 clean sheets in 38 matches.
While Jordan Pickford is the established number one, former Whites loanee Trafford says he can be a good fit for Tuchel’s style.
“I believe I can play in the way he wants to play,” he said.
“But no one’s here to make numbers up, everyone’s here to challenge and that goes for anyone in the squad.
“When I came in under Gareth (Southgate) or (Lee) Carsley, I was always coming in to challenge and put in the best account of myself to try and play whatever game it was.
“I’m here to challenge as much as anyone else is.
“Nobody has said, ‘You’re going to play X, Y and Z’, or ‘You’re not going to play X, Y and Z’. It’s just everyone’s challenging.
“Whenever we train, we all give it our best and we all push each other as much as we can and whoever the manager picks, he picks.”
Trafford’s form at the top end of the Championship has helped him earn fame in the United States after making a bet with Burnley co-owner and NFL great JJ Watt.
Watt promised to come out of retirement and play for the Cincinnati Bengals - the NFL team Trafford supports - if he did not concede another goal for the rest of the season.
The bet was lost when Trafford conceded against Cardiff to end a run of 13 successive clean sheets.
“It was just a bit of fun really,” he said.
“I was watching one of the games and the Bengals should have been winning by a lot and they weren’t.
“So I messaged him for a joke and he went with it.
“He put all the screenshots on social media and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
“But we all knew it was unlikely to happen because we would have had to go 24, 25 games in a row without conceding.
“It was just a good bit of fun really. It was a good laugh to do.”
Trafford is a fully paid-up member of the goalkeepers’ union and is especially close with fellow Cumbrian Dean Henderson, admitting they get on because of their northern banter.
“We speak a lot, whether it is on camp or off camp and it was good when I got called up, it means there was somebody from my area - because we are different up north,” he said.
“It’s someone with the same craic really, we can talk about things from up north that nobody else knows, because we’re both from the area.
“Just general craic like. Just general things that you get when you talk to someone from your area.”
