Alan Kelly had a father who also played football at club and international level. He’s coached England’s best but knows that everyone who steps between the posts has the same hopes and fears.
Last March, Alan Kelly reached the magic figure of 1,000 professional football games combining a playing career and a coaching one. Almost half of those were between the posts for Preston, Sheffield United and Blackburn Rovers. Kelly Jr has some senior skin in the game with a namesake father who was a Preston legend for 15 years and played for the Republic. His son carried on the tradition and has seen the changes in the game for almost four decades.
“Listen, you adapt to it or you die. What I mean by that as a coach is gone are the days of being in the corner and just doing your bit, and that’s you finished for the day. You have to be fully aware of the match plan, the tactical plan, and how the opposition can hurt you,” Kelly says.
The former Everton goalkeeping coach of seven years has masses of experience going back through the time warp of changes. The resilience and self-regulation needed for competitive contact sport in the 1980s, when men were supposed to get knocks, get kicked and just carry on regardless comes through. There’s no suggestion that today’s players have it easy either. That’s just the way it was in the more unregulated rough and tumble of yesteryear.
“Back when I was playing, you put your kit on, you went out, you just played football. It was definitely more physical. You were essentially your own little decision-maker, whereas now I think you’re guided to be the best you can be. The level of care that is provided for players now in terms of opportunity, both physically and mentally, with medical and sports science advances is vast.”
Despite the more unpatrolled aspects of the game Kelly endured in the 80s and 90s, he has empathy for ‘keepers who go before the shooting gallery of social media. It’s an age of camera clicks and different angles placed everywhere. Nothing is tomorrow’s fish and chips paper. Everything, good and bad, is on repeat ad infinitum. “Every millisecond is filmed, is looked at, is sifted through, you know. And I take my hat off to goalkeepers now, because they are scrutinised to the highest of levels these days.”
The modern school of goalkeeping is thankfully not awash with that other scourge of the Millennium - misinformation. However, it is important to translate the masses of data into something that works for every individual.
“If you’ve got a full week’s training, all your training sessions will be planned around the opposition in terms of penalty takers, free kicks, shot profiles and how they press. This gives Jordan and the other guys the criteria to prepare tactically and intellectually too.
"However, one size doesn’t fit all, because all goalkeepers are different sizes, all have different attributes, outstanding characteristics in their own right. So you have to work within that. If you have a six-foot 6-inch goalkeeper, for instance, is he going to be able to get down with a hand, or is he better using a foot?”
The most important attribute between the goalkeeper coach and his charge is undoubtedly the bond of trust that is formed between them. A goalkeeper coach needs to mentally prepare their subject for what is coming down the road.
“Having that 100% coverage, that 100% investment in them - this is where that personal thing comes in when we are discussing relationships. When someone knows you’re trying to do the best that you can for them through your experience, that’s where that trust comes together. I also think that’s where the goalkeeping union comes in, because only we know the downsides of what happens when it doesn’t go so well on a Saturday,” says the former 34-cap Ireland keeper.
Kelly is quick to clarify that there is no favouritism in his goalkeeping pool and it’s important to treat everyone exactly the same. There may be a goalkeeping hierarchy but there is no domination of rights when the tribe gets together for training. He is frustrated by the narrative that leads to some ‘keepers being labelled in terms of size.
“I once had this ‘keeper and the background noise was “he’s not big enough.” But I said how many crosses does he catch? He’s top of the league in crossing stats. He’s a great shot-stopper. Is he effective at the actual job? Well, yes. It’s mind-boggling that the “but…” gets in the way.”
Kelly is very clear in his admiration for Pickford, having initially seen him play for (Carlisle against Preston when he was the GK coach at Deepdale. “When we couldn’t keep Sam Johnstone, I said to Simon Grayson, we have to go and get this lad on loan. He is absolutely top-notch. What really made it for me was that he came for a cross, he didn’t quite get there, but he held his hand up. There was just this instinct I had. I went ‘This is who we need.’"
Pickford came to Preston on loan for 24 games in 2015 and impressed pretty much everyone. A few years later, the two were joined at the hip again at Goodison Park up until this summer. Kelly is protective of his previous charge “I think I can be honest and say that I’ve never seen someone take as much stick as Jordan and he’s not only dealt with it, but he’s performed through it.”
The constant external noise has centred around a perceived disparity between national and domestic form, most notably after his stellar performances in the World Cup for England in Russia. Kelly makes a valid point about how everything can catch up with you when the rise to the top is so fast.
“Jordan will admit he went through a difficult patch around about 2020 but you have to remember he came into football at 17, went through about six loans, made his name at Sunderland and then got a big money move to Everton. Throw in the England role and it’s all a whirlwind.”
Kelly and the then Toffees manager Carlo Ancelotti were involved with sports psychology and used part of that to lift their number one. Pickford himself has openly referred to how that has made him calmer and more consistent. “Carlo would work through that detail with his human touch and ability to understand. That’s why he’s one of the best coaches in the world,” said Kelly.
The current Everton number one has experienced every one of the steps that a youth can face and come through the other side. It all has to start somewhere and the Irishman has been there and done it from the bottom up. “I used to run our Under-11 and Under-12s grassroots team down in Chipping. You experience the same emotions, same situations but just at a different level. As you get older you probably get worse because you know what might happen.”
Feel the fear and do it anyway is the simple modern catchphrase, but Kelly tries to prepare the uninitiated for all kinds of terrain and the unknown. Guiding young keepers like Harry Tyrer for the transition from the academy into the first-team has involved throwing everything at them.
“I developed a game plan to expose them as much as possible, replicating multiple scenarios that involve the goalkeeper. It could be the path of a certain ball movement or an intercepted goal kick and how they react to that by developing a stockpile of decisions or a library of resources which they can select.”
Like most things in competitive sport, what marks out the very best is their ability to process the information and make the best decision in real time. Making the right call in a pressurised situation is no accident. “When Harry and Žan-Luk Leban went on loan to Chesterfield and Farsley, I think they could work back and think, yeah, we are making a call based on experience, not through alarm.”
The 56-year-old has not only seen the best of the bunch but played and trained with them too.“I played with Shay Given for the first six years of his career with Ireland, and my last six. And then I was his coach as well. The mentality when he stepped over the white line and went on the pitch was just exceptional. That absolute desire to keep the ball out the back of the net sounds totally rudimentary, but fundamentally, that’s what he knew his job was.”
Neville Southall once famously said that the mindset has to be “Why can’t I save everything?” For all of the modern techniques, risk-taking and data that the football shute generates, the simplicity of keeping a clean sheet is still a win.
Kelly Sr coached Southall at Goodison. How apt that Kelly Jr made his mark on another of the best British goalkeepers over the last 40 years. Yet he acknowledges what every goalkeeper in nets feels. “I’ve always said we all have the same anxiety and the same thoughts going our heads as the last line of defence.” Dealing with pressure is what makes the job unique.
Alan supports a number of charitable causes which we put forward to our readers below to look into and support if they wish.
- Heartbeat which is a UK charity delivering cardiac rehabilitation, information and support to people living in the North West of England.
- Sporting Memories/DementiaUK #drumming4Dementia in the Preston area.
- The Mary O’Gara Foundation which is a Non-profit organisation dedicated to increasing awareness around mental health and suicide prevention for young people.
