Leighton Baines Exclusive: On His Pride at Playing for Everton and Derby Passion
It is “Inside Everton Week” all this week on Bleacher Report, and to conclude matters on Friday we speak to left-back Leighton Baines, who is approaching eight years at the club he supported as a boy.
Baines talks about his passion for the club, the evolving nature of his role in the team, and his hopes for a successful future at Goodison Park.
Click here for our exclusive interview with Toffees manager Roberto Martinez.
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FINCH FARM, Halewood—Leighton Baines is frustrated.
After the expansive, attractive style of play that served Everton so well last season, propelling them to a fifth-placed finish in the Premier League, hopes had been high that this season would see similarly sparkling times. Unfortunately it has not quite worked out that way.
The Toffees currently sit 12th in the table as we approach the two-thirds mark in the campaign; closer to Hull City in 18th than West Ham in eighth.
“It’s clearly been disappointing up until now, on the whole,” Baines tells Bleacher Report. “I think the only positive we have got at the moment is the Europa League, which we’ve done well in and we are still in, so hopefully we can continue to do well in that.
“But more importantly at this point is improving our league form, which hasn’t been of the standards that we have set previously over the last few years. So we’ve got to do everything we can between now and the end of the season to do ourselves some justice really.”
When manager Roberto Martinez arrived last summer, with fresh eyes and ambitious plans, the squad immediately embraced his new approach and different ideas, and Baines believes refinement of that ethos, rather than wholesale changes, are now needed to get back on the right track.
“When Roberto came in it was a lot of new ideas and a lot of things that we had to change and it worked well,” he says. “In the first season we were trying to adapt to some of the manager’s ideas and we got some really good results with it.
"It was a really good experience, and we hoped coming into this season that we would push on again. But unfortunately we’ve faltered and haven’t quite managed to do it, so we have to keep working.
“The manager has said he will never change his philosophy and his style and it’s something that has served us well last year, so we’ve got to all work together to try and get back to where we were.”
In that regard, Saturday’s Merseyside derby against Liverpool comes at an apposite time. Not only does the game, following on as it does from last weekend’s away win over Crystal Palace, give the Blues a chance to finally get the sort of run of wins going that they have not been able to do so far this season, but they face a team that has seemingly dealt with many of the same issues this term, but now started to come out the other side.
Under Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool also struggled for form and fluency in the early part of the season, but seem to have slowly worked through some issues over the last couple of months.
“They look like they’ve maybe changed their style a little bit, and tried different formations, and it seems to have helped them somewhat,” Baines agrees. “They’ve got some positive results so I think we are going to have to be mindful of that when we play them, that they can probably approach the game, there are two or three styles they could approach the game with.”
The two men in the dugout will have a key role to play in how the game goes.
“The two managers are very tactical-minded and they’ll both be aware of that and try to suss each other out, and see where the advantages are to be gained on the pitch.”
Unsurprisingly, Baines is looking forward to the game.
“There are a few friends who are certainly happy when it’s over—I think it’s a lot more nervous when you are watching the game,” Baines says. “They are always tough games. They are always difficult games. Liverpool down the years have always had good teams and they’ve been tough opponents for us.
“They are great games to play in, big occasions, but I think they are only great if you come away with a result, so it’s always an intense week leading up to it.”
He adds: “A good result gives everyone a lift and it’s something that we’ve been in need of, being able to string a few results together. It’s eluded us so far this season, we just haven’t been able to get any kind of run, so we’d love a game like Liverpool to be a catalyst for us going forward.”
Baines is midway through his eighth season at Everton, meaning it is as a Blue that he has developed from a raw, 23-year-old prospect to an established international player and one of the best full-backs in the Premier League.
Having grown up watching the Toffees—as a teenager, he used to sneak into Goodison Park when the gates opened to let paying spectators out and catch the last 10 minutes—he was subsequently attached to their youth system for a spell. His professional career eventually took him to Wigan Athletic, but even then he was regularly drawn back to the Blue half of Merseyside.
When it became obvious he would need to leave the JJB Stadium (as it was called back then) to progress his career, Everton was the only choice.
“I’d still come if Everton were playing on a Sunday, I’d still try and get down and watch the game,” he recalls of his time at the Latics. “There was something about the place, and then as soon as my career progressed to the point where I was going to leave Wigan, I had a conversation with the manager, Paul Jewell, and he asked where I saw myself going.
“I said Everton—that was the only place that I really wanted to leave Wigan to go to. It was that summer, it took a long time but I ended up making it here.”
Nearly eight years later, Baines’ consistency and quality, both defensively and when in possession, have established him as one of the best in his position in the league.
As a result he has frequently attracted attention from big clubs—for a while, you could not move for newspaper stories about Manchester United’s interest—but, speaking to him, it is clear that leaving Everton was never something he was particularly interested in.
“It’s been a good journey for myself,” he says. “I’ve come [here] still at an age where I was young enough that I was still learning and still developing, still growing as a person, and I’ve been able to do that here.”
He adds: “I’ve had a really good relationship with the fans as well, and I think it’s just something that you should never take for granted. It’s something I will never take for granted, the fact that I’ve been able, and am still able, to play for this football club.”
On the pitch, Baines has grown too. The role of the full-back in the modern game seems to have changed significantly over the past 10 years, an evolution that Baines has seemed particularly well-placed to capitalise on.
A key component of Everton’s attacking play under Roberto Martinez, Baines is arguably now known just as much for his attacking contributions as his defensive ones.
“We do it differently now, with myself and Seamus [Coleman, the club's right-back]—and the others who have been playing full-back,” Baines says. “I think in the past we were sort of starting [the play] and it was more the timing of your runs and arriving at the right times and linking up and combining with the people around you, whereas now we’re probably starting higher up the pitch initially, and not really involved in the starting of the play quite so much.
“It’s just a very different role. It probably doesn’t look too much different to what it has looked in the past, but it feels quite a bit different.”
It is not just the dynamics of his position that have changed; in recent times the player and his manager have dabbled with changing his position entirely. Now 30, Baines has amassed a wealth of experience and developed a more complex tactical insight, something that Martinez has looked to utilise in different ways.
“The older you get, you get a big understanding of the game,” the Spaniard notes. “You can use that to affect others.”
When the Spaniard observed another full-back, Philipp Lahm, reinvented as a central midfielder last season by Bayern Munich manager Pep Guardiola, he immediately saw similar possibilities for his No. 3. The two went up to Old Trafford to watch Lahm up close when Manchester United hosted Bayern in the Champions League, before slowly starting to work on the new position in training.
Last season’s long-term injury to left-back understudy Bryan Oviedo put the experiment on the backburner for a while, but this season the positional shift has been used on occasion, notably against Newcastle and in the second half against Hull.
Changing position like that is a daunting proposition, but it speaks to the regard Martinez has for Baines that he would even consider it. It could also be a valuable weapon to employ at certain points over the remainder of the campaign.
“Technically you need to be very strong, physically you need to be able to cope with the demands of a central midfielder, but then you need to be experienced and have the know-how tactically that allows you to play there as well,” Martinez says. “Because that position affects a lot of players, to rig the tempo of the game, and I think Leighton can do that.
“It is a real strength to have in the squad because when you have a need in that position, you can always fill it.”
On the whole, however, it seems Baines is going to stick to the role fans are more familiar with.
“He is such an outstanding left-back,” Martinez acknowledges. “As far as [playing in] another position goes, obviously that is something that is going to go against him.”
At international level, Baines' future seems very much set at left-back, although he faces stiff competition from the likes of Kieran Gibbs and Luke Shaw to hold down the starting spot he assumed after long-time incumbent Ashley Cole began to decline.
The disappointment of the World Cup has been followed by an encouraging start to the qualification campaign for the European Championships in 2016, and Baines is hopeful a new generation of talent can fire the Three Lions to greater success.
“The qualifying campaign so far has been really positive, some really good results and we’re looking strong and well organised,” he says. “The next few qualifying games are a really good chance for us to assert ourselves in that position in the group and basically get ourselves a lot closer to qualifying, and being in a position to go to the Championships.”
The squad has a fresh look under head coach Roy Hodgson, and Baines believes a number of his club teammates have an opportunity to step into important roles with the national setup.
“The senior players have stepped aside now, the likes of Stevie [Steven Gerrard] and Frank [Lampard] and Ashley Cole, so now that presents opportunities,” he says. “There are some really promising young players in and around the squad, people like Ross [Barkley] and John [Stones] here, who have got to look at that opportunity that is in front of them.
“They will be aware that they have to play well for Everton first, and hopefully they will get the chance to then go and perform for them as well.”
While the European Championships remain a target for the future, it is on Everton that Baines is exclusively focused. It is 20 years since Everton last won a trophy, the 1995 FA Cup, an occasion Baines recalls clearly because, well, because he was there.
“I was there at the time, part of the academy setup here. So I was at the game,” he notes, adding dryly: “I remember it quite well.”
Motivated by those memories, Baines hopes that he and the current squad at Goodison Park can bring the next bit of silverware to the club.
“It would be amazing to be in a position to bring something like that back to the club,” he notes. “I think we all understand how much it would mean to the club and to the fans as well. It means so much, but there is so much work to be done to get to that position.
“We have just got to work as hard as we can, to get back to the standards we have set before, and hopefully those days will come.”
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