West Ham Utd assistant manager Alan Irvine
has held every position there is to hold in
football, Player, youth coach, academy director,
assistant manager and manager.
Alan shares with TFSM his experiences of over
40 years in the professional game.
Alan people talk about different player generations. Apart
from the athleticism, and pace of todays modern game. How
would you compare players from your generation to todays
player.
Well, it is a funny one really, because many people talk about how
the game has moved on, which it has in many ways. Clearly it’s
moved on in terms of athleticism, but that’s not to say that there
were not athletic players in my day. Every team had some good
athletes. Sport science plays a big part in the development of
athleticism and I think it fair to say that at the top level these
days, every club needs to have athletic players. I think that the
generation I grew up playing with had a lot of technical players.
Today there are some very talented technical players, without
doubt but there are also some players who play at a high level
because they are big, powerful and quick. I also think players
were more durable back then. There was never any talk about
there being too many games. The fact is that we would play on
two consecutive days in at Christmas, new year and Easter, which
would be unheard of now. Players would turn out with injuries,
which you would argue is wrong, but there
were other factors involved. Players needed the money!
Appearance money and win bonuses were huge incentives and
made up a large part of your wage. Players also took more
responsibility back then. Unfortunately modern coaching
methods have led to today’s players being much more coach
dependent. As a young player coming through I never really got
coached on movement, positioning, etc. You had to learn those
things yourself on the pitch, in real time. The senior players
helped you to learn these things more than the coaches.