At Everton’s Finch Farm training base academy director Alan Irvine sees only opportunity. The former Newcastle and Blackburn coach and Sheffield Wednesday manager is a passionate advocate of youth development, and works for a club that relies on finding fresh local talent.
Eleven 16 year-olds have played Premier League football and Everton produced six of them. Irvine believes EPPP will help him keep the conveyor belt rolling.
“Our main selling point for young players is opportunity. They can see that if your good enough you get a chance, and this could have a huge effect,” Irvine says.
“Getting increased access to players, having the chance to work with them in daylight hours, will be a huge advantage. It will give us time.
"Say we have a lad scoring goals for fun in the under-10s, but people are looking and thinking he’s not very quick, he’s not going to progress physically, we’re not sure.
“We don’t want to throw away a natural goalscorer because he’s not easy on the eye, and we’ll have got time to do something about it. With all this extra access can you bring the lad out of the session and say this is specific for you.”
Irvine believes Everton will look selectively outside the 90-minute radius, and while the club’s core catchment will remain Merseyside, bringing the best talent together will benefit them all.
“I found that by putting good players together they all improved. The individuals develop the group and the group develops the individuals, and quality goes through the roof.
“If we don’t improve with these rules we are doing something wrong. Either we are either not recruiting properly or coaching properly.
"One of the things about EPPP is that we are more accountable than we have been. All that access takes away excuses.”
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