In our latest longer read feature, Mason Holgate tells evertonfc.com about a transformative conversation with Marco Silva, reveals the real story behind the televised spat which became a social media hit and explains how he’s changed since coming to Goodison Park as a callow 18-year-old from Barnsley...

Mason Holgate is feeling tired and old – but matters aren’t as stark as they seem.

The defender’s weariness is explained away easily enough, Holgate ambling into the room for this interview directly after 90 minutes tearing around the training field at USM Finch Farm.

His advancing years? All things are relative. Holgate turned 23 the day before this conversation. He joined Everton aged 18 in 2015 and the intervening four years have whistled past.

Has he changed in that period?

“Massively,” starts Holgate, grabbing a bottle of apple juice and cautiously folding himself into a chair.

“As a player and a person. You are still a kid at 18.

“I was never quiet. I have never been quiet in my life. But if I wanted to say something, I would probably keep it to myself.

“Now I am much more open, I tell people what I think. I have matured as a person.”

It was Holgate’s readiness to speak up which led him to sit down with Marco Silva earlier this season for what would prove a reinvigorating conversation.

The campaign had reached its first international break with unseemly haste and Holgate was keen to get back out on the pitch.

His Carabao Cup appearance against Lincoln City and 17 minutes from the bench in Everton’s Premier League victory over Watford was a contrast to the player’s pivotal role on loan at West Bromwich Albion for the second half of last season.

“I went to talk to the gaffer because I’d gone from playing every game to coming back and not playing,” says Holgate. “We had a really good conversation and he told me what I had to work on.

“Since that day my focus has been much more ‘on’.

 

“I’ve been working on different parts of my game and I think that is starting to show.

“It is down to me to prove I’ve made progress, then the manager has to make his decision over whether I play.

“When I do get my chances, I have to prove to him I can stay in the team.”

Silva alluded to Holgate’s elevated concentration levels following Everton’s win at Sheffield Wednesday in the Carabao Cup third round in September.

Holgate was imperious at Hillsborough; assertive and alert, sharp and streetwise. Since that evening, he has been called upon by his boss on five further occasions. 

“He showed me he is ready to play,” commented Silva. “But one of the main things about him is to be focussed, every single minute in training sessions. Then it will be natural in the games.

“He did really well but I want more from him because he has the qualities to do that.

“He is changing something at Finch Farm every day, I am seeing that.”

It was Holgate’s 24 games on loan with West Brom, in the player’s opinion, which stoked an initial change in his mindset.

He became first pick right-back at the Hawthorns – after joining with a view to playing centre-half – the Yorkshireman’s strength in defence and attacking thrust key ingredients in a free-scoring Baggies side which reached the Championship play-offs. More of which later.

Holgate was playing every week, every few days more often than not. He has said previously he returned from the Midlands a better footballer and now he expands on his theory.

“The main thing [which improved] was my consistency,” says Holgate.

“Before, I would be unbelievable in one session, then the next one I might as well have not been there.

“Now there is a consistent base. Some sessions will always be better than others but there is a minimum level.

“And my physicality has improved.

“I want to be a centre-back and getting a good run of games in the Championship helped me physically.

“I think people had doubts over whether I was strong enough to be a centre-back, especially in a two.

“I feel I definitely am.

“That comes with age as well, I have grown and filled out and am more suited to the role at centre-half.”

Holgate’s broad shoulders and athletic physique are far removed from the player’s “really skinny” frame when he bolted onto the scene with Barnsley aged 18.

As a spindly teenager he would rely on his nous and speed, wedded to his own brand of kidology, to convince strikers they were battling on equal terms.

Now he is a slave to his gym routine and a match for all-comers.

“I’m in there pretty much every day,” says Holgate.

“Theo Walcott goes to a gym near me and I have joined the same one. I see him in there all the time.

 

“That work is reflected in my physique and how I am playing.

“I don’t get thrown about and can compete more than ever.”

Holgate’s renewed focus means he no longer has Silva routinely on his case.

The defender is taking his manager’s messages on board, negating the need for Silva to revisit old ground.

Holgate smiles when reminded of a pre-season match against Sevilla this summer and an impromptu one-on-one pitchside tutorial during an extended break in play.

That vignette on a broiling day in Germany epitomised Silva’s hands-on methods.

“He is a great coach and has helped me a lot,” says Holgate. “Last year, my concentration and focus were not as good. He had to keep drilling things home.

“Now, you will have to ask him [if I am right], but I think I take things on a lot more. That helps massively with him.

“Everything he tries to put across I understand, so I don’t think he has to speak to me as much now.

“I know my job and what I am doing. I think he has noticed that as well.”

If any of this sounds as if Holgate walked round with his head in the clouds until the past few months, then that would be a grossly inaccurate interpretation.

He cracked senior football as a teenager, was signed by Everton scarcely eight months on from his League One debut, and was playing in the Premier League 12 months to the day after arriving at Goodison Park.

There are innumerable tales of footballers talented enough to reach the top but whose temperament stunted their progress.

Holgate owned the minerals to advance and had a couple of decent runs in Everton’s team. He featured in the final nine games of 2016/17 and the following campaign started nine out of 11 matches around the turn of the year.

 

Holgate had played 48 games for Everton in all – 38 in the Premier League – when he dropped to the Championship with West Brom in January.

It’s not the sort of decision you make if you’re not serious about your job.

“I was dying to play,” he says.

“I started playing football when I was young because I enjoyed it and I never want to be not playing.

“You can be classed as a Premier League player, but if you’re not playing that is irrelevant.

“I am a footballer. I want to play football. It was so easy to fit in at West Brom. I made a lot of very good friends who I still speak to every day.”

The last of Holgate’s 24 Baggies appearances came in a highly-charged Hawthorns play-off semi-final second leg against Aston Villa.

West Brom won 1-0 – Holgate’s booming throw diverted home by Craig Dawson – to level the tie 1-1 on aggregate.

Holgate took his team’s first penalty in the shootout. He was eyeballed all the way to the spot by goalkeeper Jed Steer, who tumbled to his left to push out Holgate’s kick.

Fellow defender Ahmed Hegazi was also foiled and Villa went to Wembley.

“I was on flames all week, I didn’t miss once,” says Holgate, adopting an incredulous tone but grinning nonetheless.

“I don’t regret it too much because I decided the day before if it went to penalties which way I was going [to shoot].

“In hindsight maybe I should have gone down the middle.

 

“But if I had decided on a spot [to aim for] then changed my mind, I’d probably still be upset about it.

“The keeper guessed the right way. That’s football, isn’t it?”

Plenty of footballers have related how they clammed up under the oppressive glare of a shootout.

Holgate’s not one of them but he needed a short period to come to terms with the blow – and reckons he emerged a more rounded character for his experience.

"I was fine walking up to take it, I didn’t feel any pressure,” says Holgate.

“The penalty wasn’t one of the best I have taken but anybody can miss one.

“I was gutted, really upset, because I became very close with everybody there.

“It’s obviously not your fault because you’ve not meant to miss – but you blame yourself.

“I had a few days to myself, not really leaving the house. But I went on holiday and got my head around it and it was fine.

“It helped me grow as a person.

“I did well in the game itself. It’s just penalties and it wasn’t our day. Not everything can go your way.”

Holgate immediately, and perhaps unwittingly, provides an example of how that penalty disappointment fed into his growth as a person.

He used to slam down his shutters on a bad day but now he remains open for business.

“If something wasn’t going my way, or I didn’t play for a few weeks, I’d start thinking about other things,” says Holgate.

“Be sulking, pretty much. Now I get on with it.

 

“I have to keep going every day and I am doing that. If I am frustrated about anything, I have learned to manage it... rather than letting everybody know and walking round sulking.

“You owe it to yourself to train as hard as you can and to try to get better every day.”

Holgate debunks one myth from his time at West Brom.

A video clip of a coming together between him and then Bolton Wanderers striker Clayton Donaldson spread like wildfire on social media.

“I don’t know who you are,” Holgate told Donaldson. Only he didn’t.

“I never said what it looked like on the screen,” he says. “I genuinely did not say that. I wouldn’t say that.

“I said, ‘You’ve not touched the ball’ – I did say it a bit more aggressively than that.

“I don’t play football to make friends.

“I want to win. If someone says something to me, I have a personality which means I will say something back.”

Holgate is good on this subject. He concedes a bit of individual needle is useful to get the juices flowing and insists a running one-on-one dispute would never distract him from his primary assignment.

His disciplinary record – one red card in the thick end of 100 senior games, and that for two bookings as an 18-year- old at Barnsley – stands up his case.

“Yeah [I like an individual confrontation] because then I am fired up and ready to go,” says Holgate.

“I am quite loud, so people will say things back to me and I’ll respond.

“People sometimes take that the wrong way, they see me arguing and think I’m hot tempered.

“I am not a hot head. I keep my head and know what I am doing.

“It never affects the way I’m playing.”

To that end, he is candid enough to confess his natural game – characterised by pace, aggression and poise on the ball – would once have been overtaken by a desperation to impress.

“I always knew I wasn’t a nailed-on starter [in previous seasons with Everton], so felt I had to overperform every time I played,” says Holgate.

“Before games I’d get myself worked up and be thinking, ‘I need to do this and that’ and possibly try too hard.

“Overthink things or try to do something that wasn’t on when I was on the ball.

“Through playing every week [at West Brom] I have learned you have to be comfortable and just do what you can, then you’ll have a more consistent level of performance.”

By pointing to his stint with West Brom as valuable education, Holgate offers a peek into the workings of his mind.

He is interested in the psychological element of high-stakes sport but likes to solve his own puzzles.

“I don’t think anyone can tell you what will work best for you, you have to work things out for yourself,” says Holgate.

“It’s taken me a few years but I have learned to deal with things better.

“What I do before games is down to me alone.

“Playing regularly helped me understand what works for me.”

Interviewed in his birthday week last year Holgate was categorical about his ongoing determination to improve.

“I do not like passing time and feeling I am not getting anywhere,” he said.

It is especially pertinent, then, that Holgate has used the past 12 months wisely, that he believes the footballer sat here today is better than the one who spoke those words.

“I have a better all-round game, it is more suited to playing at centre-back, I think... but I would rather be at right-back than not play,” says Holgate.

“I feel better and stronger and more capable than ever of doing what I believe I can.”

Holgate spent his birthday evening at his parents’ house in Doncaster. He gets back home at least once a fortnight because “my mum would kill me if I didn’t”.

But with Dominic Calvert-Lewin around and the addition of Fabian Delph this summer there is a little corner of Yorkshire in Everton’s dressing room.

Much like Alex Iwobi who came to Everton declaring a desire to shed his ‘youngster’ tag at 23, Holgate and 22-year-old Calvert-Lewin both believe they have exited the ‘up-and-coming’ category.

When it comes to absorbing knowledge from his seniors, though, Holgate insists he’ll never be too old to learn.

“I did not know Fabian before he came but we’ve got on really well,” says Holgate.

 

“He’s a good lad, a loud Yorkshireman.

“He has a lot of experience and helps a lot of the boys. I think he is a great signing.

“A lot of these players have come to Everton after winning trophies, which is massive.

“Me and Dom are not young lads anymore.

“But wherever you are in your life, whatever age, you can take things from other people to help you.

“It is important to do that.”

The defender leaps from his seat and strides out the door. Mason Holgate’s energy is restored. He is older and wiser, yes, but young and hungry, too.

A version of this interview first appeared in the Everton matchday programme.