NICK Pope is hoping his meteoric rise will reach the ‘pinnacle’ this month as he waits to see if he is named in Gareth Southgate’s latest England squad.

The 25-year-old has gone from Turf understudy to one of the Premier League’s form glovemen.

His shutout at the London Stadium was a 10th clean sheet in 26 Premier League starts since replacing Tom Heaton midway through the win over Crystal Palace on September 10. And with his rivals for an England spot stuttering Pope could yet make a late surge for a spot in the World Cup squad.

Joe Hart returned to the West Ham side on Saturday but made a mistake for Burnley’s third goal, while Jack Butland and Jordan Pickford have also been in the spotlight for errors recently.

But Pope is just delighted to see his name even being mentioned as a potential England international, saying he was all set to play second fiddle to Heaton at the start of this season.

“I’ll just have to wait and find out. I don’t know anything. I’ll wait and see and go from there,” the former Charlton Athletic goalkeeper said of a possible England call today.

“It would mean everything; the pinnacle of football is to get called up to your country.

“The fact that people are even talking about it is great for me, the fact that my name is even being mentioned around it is a great start. It’s something that I couldn’t have even imagined for my career. It’s nice.

“It would be a massive plus for me, a massive bonus, I can’t hide that. It’s something that I’d love to be involved in.

“We’ll see, my focus is on Burnley, we’ve got eight games left and I’m giving everything towards that. Everything else will take care of itself.”

Pope’s latest chance to impress Southgate came in the win at West Ham, when he twice used his feet to make key saves from Marko Arnautovic and Manuel Lanzini in the first half.

Those stops laid the foundations for Burnley’s second half romp in the capital, which sparked ugly scenes among the home fans, with some invading the pitch and others surrounding the directors’ box.

While Burnley kept calm in the chaos the scenes brought back memories for Pope, who was at Charlton when Addicks supporters staged regular protests against their owners.

“I had it a little bit at Charlton. We had a sequence of strange events,” he said. “We had beach balls on the pitch and stress balls. I’ve been involved in a few pitch invasions to be honest. It was quite similar but it was different to be on the opposite team this time.

“It was nuts (at Charlton). That was happening week in week out for quite a while towards the end of that season.”

On the scenes at West Ham on Saturday, Pope added: “It’s something that you’ve got to try and put out of your mind so that you can concentrate on the game.

“It’s something that you can’t really expect but we all dealt with it really well. It’s disappointing that it happens nowadays in football but all we can do is get on with it.

“After the first goal that’s when the first incident happened but we kept our heads, got a second one quickly and took advantage.

“I thought the boys dealt with it excellently.”