Colin Harvey says video analysis and the ‘pressing’ system acclaimed in modern football formed the crux of his coaching techniques more than 40 years ago.
Harvey was assistant to former Everton teammate Howard Kendall when the Club embarked on an extraordinary period of success in the mid-1980s.
One of Goodison Park’s most treasured sons, he was initially promoted from youth coach to work with Everton’s reserves when fellow 1969/70 championship-winning midfielder Kendall was appointed manager in 1981.
It would be two more years before Harvey became one of Kendall’s chief lieutenants – joining future superstars including Graeme Sharp and Kevin Ratcliffe in jumping from reserves to first team.
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Harvey’s innovation was nevertheless helping shape Everton’s tactics before his promotion – and as an arch Blue, watching 'his' team come to the boil from a pitchside seat remains a personal and professional highlight for a man who played 388 games for the Club.
“We played a [reserve] game at Wolves, a midweek game,” started Harvey.
“I had them pressing from the front and moving up from midfield and the back four.
“We had Kevin Ratcliffe [at centre-half], you needed to be fairly quick [at the back] because you were leaving a lot of space behind you.
“Howard said, ‘How long have you had them doing that?’
“It had been nine months to a year’.
“He said, ‘I think I’m going to get the first team to do that’.
“They would go and press the ball and more often than not the fella on the ball would turn round and pass back or square.”
Harvey continued: “Being an Evertonian, it [working by Kendall’s side] gave me an extra boost: knowing my dad was sat in the stand behind me and being on the bench thinking, ‘This is what you have always wanted to see, a great team playing great football’.
“We knew they were good players but it was a case of getting them to believe in themselves and the team.
“They were one of the best teams in Europe.
“The abiding memory [of that era] is of a lot of pride and a lot of joy watching them.”
Any given Premier League match is captured on scores of cameras recording the action from innumerable perspectives.
That heightened coverage has opened the way for games to be studied from every conceivable angle.
Clubs employ skilled staff to narrow down on key incidents or passages of play and edit recordings to use as coaching aids.
Harvey returned to Goodison as youth team boss after retiring in 1976 following two years with Sheffield Wednesday and soon alighted on the idea of filming matches to supplement his training ground coaching.
But in an age of less refined and pervading technology the entire process qualified as a two-man job.
"I used to get someone with a camera on the main stand... a fella called Peter Tushingham – his sister [Rita Tushingham] was an actress ," explained Harvey.
"He started zooming in because he wanted to send on the footage to improve himself [have his work noticed].
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"But I said to keep the shot as wide as possible because I wanted to see everything going on.
"I spent Sunday going through it, then on Monday would pick out certain bits.
"When I was back at Everton last time [Harvey had six years as youth coach form 1997 and won the FA Youth Cup in his first season], we had people from John Moores University [to edit footage] – I’d say give me 15 to 20 minutes of the game.
"[I'd want to see] why did they get in our last third, what were our good moves, why did they end up getting a shot?
"We’d show the players on a Tuesday because one of the students had done it for me on a Monday."
Harvey’s studious methods were characteristic of a coach who would leave nothing to chance in his players’ development.
Immortalised by a statue also featuring fellow Holy Trinity members Kendall and Alan Ball on Goodison Road, Harvey’s remit in charge of Everton’s reserves was to ease the transition from youth football into Kendall’s senior team.
“I used to bring them back for the afternoon – what else were they going to do anyway,” said Harvey, who had 11 years in Everton's first team after making his first senior appearance aged 18 in a 1963 European Cup game in Inter Milan's San Siro home.
“It wasn’t a hard session, it was work on technique and things they were missing.
“Sharpy [Graeme Sharp] needed to improve on certain things, for example.
“It was the same with all of them. You can always get better.
"I remember when Alan Ball came to Everton.
"He raised the bar and we all had to go up – you were never going to reach him but you had to push your bar up to try to be as good as him, even if you were never going to manage that.
“I was always a great believer that if you worked hard you could improve and I was there to try to improve them.
“If I managed that I was doing my job.
“They all seemed to appreciate it.
“When they went through to the first team and I was moved up, I knew them individually and they knew what was expected, the hard work required.
“I instilled it into them.
“It wasn’t for me. It was for them.”
Everton - Howard's Way tells the full story of Howard Kendall's glorious trophy-winning team in the 1980s and tales from Merseyside during that era.
All proceeds from the documentary will go to fund The People's Place, Everton's purpose-built mental health facility close to Goodison Park.
Click here for details of how to watch Howard's Way.
