🎧 A-Z: Alan Irvine

[Getty Images] In the latest episode of BBC Radio Merseyside's Everton A to Z, we have reached the letter I. Paul Salt, Mike Hughes and Chris Coughlin discuss current Everton assistant manager, and former player, Alan Irvine, in the A-Z of Merseyside Sport. On Irvine, Hughes said: "Everton signed him from Queen's Park, he was an amateur, came to Goodison in 1981, he made his debut in I think it was either against AC Milan or Inter Milan or he certainly made his debut pre-season in you know a famous old stadium with a massive attendance. "I remember him saying he'd gone from playing for Queen's Park where there's a few hundred watching or a couple of thousand and all of a sudden he's playing for a high-profile team like Everton and welcome to sort of life at the very top level. "If you look at him as a player, he was a really talented footballer and a very unlucky footballer in a lot of respects because he was in the Everton team when the big change happened, when Everton went from being a team that looked as though they could be heading towards a really dark and desperate season and it ended up with Everton, despite playing in front of a really disgruntled crowd against Coventry City on New Year's Eve 1983, they began 84 with a couple of very, very important victories. "He was in the team and scored one of the goals for Everton in a famous 2-0 victory, third round of the FA Cup, away at Stoke City. This was the game where Howard Kendall - he opened a window in the away dressing room and you could hear the atmosphere in the background. The talk was 'listen to this, go out and do it for these people'. That was a turning point. Irvine played a role in every one of the FA Cup games except the final. "The player that kind of put an end to his career at Everton is one of Everton's greatest ever players, certainly from that team, Trevor Steven." Listen to the full episode below or on BBC Sounds