The Everton players who will take on Liverpool in the first Merseyside derby of the new season at Anfield tomorrow afternoon have been put through some fairly intensive workouts by their manager Davie Moyes and his coaching staff at their Finch Farm base this week.
“We always try to do three days training straight in the build-up to a game,” said Alan Irvine, the Premier League team’s Scottish assistant, during a brief break from preparations earlier today. “So we’ve been in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday ahead of this one.”
Irvine, who has a long and impressive coaching curriculum vitae, has never had any qualms about asking a lot from footballers before a big match. He came through at Queen’s Park under Eddie Hunter in the late 1970s and learned much from working with an individual who was a renowned, some would say notorious, taskmaster.
“I suppose the overriding thing I picked up from Eddie was that you can be really demanding of players if they know that you care,” he said. “That is what kept me going back again despite the abuse I got from him at times. It was really clear that he cared.
“Yes, he worked us hard, but he was committed himself. Bear in mind that he wasn’t working professionally, he was doing it part-time. For him to give all of the time, thought and energy that he did was impressive to see. That was a huge influence on me when it came to how I was going to approach coaching.”
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Irvine was upset when he heard that Hunter had passed away at the age of 82 last weekend. He knows that he owes the Glasgow plumber an enormous amount. The promising but diminutive winger was rejected by several professional clubs when he was a boy because of his height. His fortunes changed when he joined the famous amateur outfit and caught the eye of the man who would become his mentor.
“What Eddie did for me was huge,” he said. “He was probably the biggest influence on my career along with my father. I thanked him personally for what he did for me over the years, but I could never really thank him enough.
“I was a late developer physically. I had been on a few trials and had been told the same thing after all of them, that I was too small. To be perfectly honest, they were all right, I was too small.
“But I got invited in to Queen’s Park and before long Eddie started to take an interest in me. He was brilliant. He spent his own time trying to develop me physically in the gym and develop me as a footballer on the pitch. We worked on crossing after training because at that time creating goals not scoring goals was the essential job of a winger.
“I was playing for the second team, for the Strollers. But he obviously saw something in me he liked. He was great with me, was so supportive. He could be very, very demanding. At times, I did think, ‘Why am I doing this? This is nonsense!’ I was working as an insurance broker and only playing part-time. But I always knew deep down it was in my best interest.”
After helping Queen’s Park to win the old Second Division title in the 1980/81 season, Irvine moved down to Everton. The high standards which Hunter had required the youngster to attain on a weekly basis stood him in very good stead after he arrived at Goodison Park.
“It was quite a step up,” he said. “To put the jump into perspective, my last game for Queens was against Cowdenbeath at Central Park. My next game of football was for Everton against Inter Milan in Japan (in the pre-season Kirin Cup tournament). It was just mind-blowing.
“I signed a three year contact. At the back of my mind I thought, ‘I’ll be back working in insurance in three years’. But I was fit. In the first day of training we were doing some running and I was right up at the front. I thought, ‘Okay, I can cope with this’. Straight away, I realised I had the athleticism that was required. That was down to Eddie.
“Not all of his advice was the best I have to say. Before I went down to Everton, he came to me and said, ‘Make sure you stick up for yourself! Don’t you let any b****** take advantage of you!’ So when I started out I was actually a bit prickly. It took me a while to realise the chat was just banter and wasn’t personal. Going from an insurance broker’s office to a dressing room is a bit of a change.
“I saw Eddie last year when I went up to Lesser Hampden for Malky Mackay Snr’s book launch. It was lovely to see both Eddie and Malky again and thank them for everything that they did for me when I was a youngster. Eddie was Mr Queen’s Park wasn’t he?”
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Irvine would have difficulty suing you for defamation if you described him as Mr Everton. The 67-year-old is, after all, now in his fourth stint there. He has been a player, academy director, first team coach and assistant manager during the past five decades. But he is enjoying being a part of things at the moment as much as he ever has.
“I've actually tried to retire about three or four times now,” he said. “I keep going back in. But I’ve obviously got very strong links with the club having worked here on so many occasions. I wouldn’t have come back for any other club.
“The pull of this one was enormous. The thought of being part of a little bit of history as Everton moved from one stadium to another, of being there when they played their last game at Goodison Park and their first game at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, was a huge draw.
“The new stadium is fantastic, just terrific. No Evertonian really wanted to have to move away from Goodison. But I think everybody realised that it had to be done for the club to move forward.”
Irvine continued, “We had some good results last season and managed to avoid relegation quite comfortably. We’ve started the season pretty well. We didn’t have a good pre-season, didn’t manage to get players in as quickly as we would have wanted to. We were, I’ve got to admit, worried because of that.
“It just goes to show you that you can have a terrible pre-season and still get off to a good start. We’re pleased so far. We’ve got seven points out of the first four games and it could have been more. Having said that, it's early days. In this league you can lose four in a row quickly. When that happens, the doom and gloom return. But right now it's a lovely time to be part of the club.”
Jack Grealish, the England midfielder who joined on loan from Manchester City this summer, has been integral to the positive start which Everton, who go into the Liverpool game in sixth spot, have made this term. Indeed, he was named Premier League Player of the Month for August after impressing in their wins over Brighton at home and Wolves away.
The £100m man lost his way somewhat at the Etihad and dropped out of his national squad as a result. So why does his fellow winger think he has got his mojo back in recent weeks?
“First of all, he's a very, very talented player, there's absolutely no question about that,” said Irvine. “You see that every day in training. He's top quality. But when he first came in I had a chat with him and said, ‘I want to get a smile back on your face. The player we used to watch at Aston Villa looked like he was enjoying his football. Where has he gone?’
“Don’t get me wrong, Jack enjoyed a lot of his football at City and was very successful there (he won three Premier League titles, the FA Cup and the Champions League). But latterly that maybe wasn’t the case so much. But he’s got a freedom to play here and has got a smile on his face again now.
“I think he's probably enjoying being top dog. I mean that in the nicest possible way because he's not a big-headed lad at all. But he's probably liking being really important to the team. He’s struck up a great relationship with the fans and has been a really good signing for us.”
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Irvine has relished working with another supremely gifted wide boy during the past couple of seasons since becoming a part of the Scotland set-up - Bournemouth forward Ben Gannon-Doak.
So much so, in fact, that when Moyes got in touch and asked him to be a part of his backroom staff at Everton back in January he stressed that he would only accept the post if he was allowed to remain involved with his country.
“It was a condition of me joining, that I would be able to continue with the national team,” he said. “I have really enjoyed being a part of things. It has been very different to what I have been used to.
“I was in the camp this month and was pleased the Denmark and Belarus games were successful for us. Greece will be difficult next month, a real test. They are a very good team. But we will go into the next double header with confidence. It is fantastic to be a part of a World Cup qualifying campaign.
“I had actually agreed to become the coach of the Scotland Under-19 team. Steve Clarke heard about it and got in touch and asked me if I would consider changing direction a bit and going in with the senior side. It has been lovely to be able to do it.”
Irvine played for Everton – where he won, despite not featuring in the final against Watford at Wembley, the FA Cup in 1984 - Crystal Palace, Dundee United and Blackburn Rovers and came close to being called up by his country on a few occasions. But a longed-for international appearance always eluded him.
“Jock Stein watched myself and my Everton team mate Graeme Sharp really closely after the World Cup in Spain in 1982,” he said. “There was quite a lot of talk about us at the time, a lot of speculation that we would both get capped. Graeme did. Unfortunately, I didn't.
“To be able to represent my country a little bit in this way now is amazing for me. Standing at the side of the pitch and listening to Flower of Scotland in the first game I was involved in was a special moment. I hadn't actually given it too much thought to what it would be like beforehand. But the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.”
That is very much how members of the Tartan Army feel when Gannon-Doak gets on the ball. Irvine is no different. He is optimistic the former Celtic and Liverpool teenager can go from strength to strength in Scotland’s remaining Group C qualifiers and spearhead their bid to reach Canada, Mexico and the United States next summer.
“He's certainly talented and he's certainly confident,” he said. “But those aren't things that will hold him back are they? He's obviously got this incredible pace, which is a huge asset in today's game.
“He’s got a really good chance of fulfilling his potential and living up to the hype there is about him. I'm just hoping that this move to Bournemouth actually gets him a lot of first team football and allows him to continue his develop.
“Ben's a fiery little character. He's very, very determined. I've struck up a really nice relationship with him since joining the Scotland set-up and I'm really confident that he can push on. If I could finish my career with a trip to the World Cup I would be a happy man. It would be a great way to retire.”
Damien Duff, the former Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Newcastle United and Republic of Ireland winger, once described Alan Irvine as the best coach he ever worked under.
Everton and Scotland can only benefit from their involvement with a man who has never forgotten the grounding he received in the game from the redoubtable Eddie Hunter when he was starting out at Queen’s Park and who has no reservations whatsoever about challenging players to reach a higher level.
