'There was no fire, I was rotting away. Portsmouth saved my career': Ex-Sheffield United, Aston Villa and Stoke man Enda Stevens
The left-back made 99 appearances and was crowned The News/Sports Mail Player of the Season during his time at Fratton Park
Enda Stevens’ Premier League credentials had long since expired, while two years of loan destinations merely provided temporary solutions.
Once recognised as one of Ireland’s rising young stars and widely coveted by leading English football clubs, by the summer of 2015 the left-back’s career was precariously positioned.
Rendered a free agent after finally being released from Aston Villa’s bomb squad, the 25-year-old was struggling to attract potential suitors, such was the extent of his waning reputation.
Interest was declared by League One pair Doncaster and Colchester, yet it was the opportunity to link-up with Pompey which tempted Stevens to the south coast in June 2015 on a two-year deal.
Having just finished 16th in League Two - the lowest Football League position in the club’s history - the club was under new management with Paul Cook now at the helm.
For Stevens, Fratton Park represented a final shot at playing in England - and he credits the move for transforming a career which later saw the defender return to the Premier League and establish himself as a Republic of Ireland regular.
‘There was no fire, I was rotting away’
‘Pompey was everything to my career, my last chance saloon. If it didn’t go well there, there was nowhere else. It was probably back to Ireland,’ he told The News.
‘Paul Cook brought me down to earth, he took out all the ego, you’ve been at Aston Villa, the Premier League. He stripped all that away from me and made me become a footballer first.
‘At Villa, some days I trained with their first-team and then, if they had enough numbers, I’d go back to the reserves. My Villa career was stuck in a rut, I just couldn’t get out. There was no fire, I was rotting away.
‘After leaving Villa in the summer of 2015, I was in a bad place. A free agent, but the phone wasn’t ringing. The previous season, I had been at Northampton on loan for a month and did all right, but Chris Wilder sent me back because I was nowhere near fit.
‘I had an honest conversation with Chris. He told me “You need to start again. Try your best to get out of Villa and go and start again. You aren’t ready, you aren’t fit, you are not this, you are not that”.
‘I drove away from Northampton thinking “I’m done”. I actually spent the rest of the season on loan with Doncaster, which worked out okay. That summer, however, the phone wasn’t really hot.
‘At Villa, I fell away to the side, you get forgotten about, then it reached the stage when I was released. Now what do I do? I joined Pompey.
‘I remember talking to people who were telling me that dropping into League Two was a bad move, you’re better than that. Well, I wasn’t better than League Two, I hadn’t shown I was better than League Two. I hadn’t shown anything.
‘Football is an egotistical game, yet there’s a difference between ego and confidence - I didn’t have confidence, but I had an ego. I was talking like I was doing it, but I actually wasn’t.
‘My agent, who is honest as the day is long, told me to look in the mirror and ask myself what had I done to deserve better than League Two? He was right.
‘Pompey was my last chance. I had to build my career all over again. If it didn't go well there, I was done.’
Creating history with Shamrock Rovers
Shamrock Rovers were charging towards consecutive League of Ireland titles in 2011. Meanwhile, having beaten Partizan Belgrade 3-2 in a Europa League play-off, history had been created by becoming the first Irish side to reach the knock-out stages of a European competition.
A central figure in the Dublin-based club’s ongoing success was their swashbuckling 21-year-old left-back, who, inevitably, was attracting admiring glances from the English game.
Championship duo Brighton and Nottingham Forest were among the clubs to covet the highly-promising Stevens, yet it was Premier League Villa, under manager Alex McLeish, who won the race for his services in August 2011.
However, the youngster was keen to remain at the Tallaght Stadium for a while longer in order to complete their European adventure. As a consequence, it was agreed his Villa transfer would come into effect in January 2012.
With his move to the Midlands secured, Stevens subsequently helped Shamrock retain their Premier Division title, in addition to featuring twice against Spurs in the group stages of the Europa Cup.
Then the newly-crowned PFAI Young Player of the Year headed to Villa Park - for a stay in England which would span 13-and-a-half years.
He added: ‘Villa didn’t go the way I wanted. I wasn’t the most professional, I didn’t get it, I didn’t have the edge to go and be the best player, I never had that. I was kind of just getting by.
‘When Shamrock played Partizan Belgrade (August 2011), there were rumours going around that I would be moving to England. When I was told by my agent that it was Aston Villa, we were laughing down the phone - no way!
‘However, in Ireland they were umming and ahhing over a release clause in my contract, apparently the wording was wrong, so I was panicking about whether this was actually going to happen.
‘Then I got the call one morning from my agent - the flight’s in an hour. I was running down the stairs at home, my ma said “Are you going to the gym?”. I shouted “Yes” and closed the door. Gone. It was that much of a rush, my ma and da didn’t know I was off to sign for a Premier League club!
‘There were other clubs, such as Brighton, and I think there was a phone call from Nottingham Forest while on the flight. Then it was straight to Villa’s training ground, scans, medical and it was done. I didn’t even have time to get a haircut, it was that much of a panic!
‘I do and I don’t regret not immediately leaving Shamrock Rovers to join Villa. We had qualified for the Europa League and it was a big celebration, we were the first Irish team to do it.
‘Looking back, I probably should have cut ties and gone over straight away. Yet I never really grasped how big Villa was. You go in there and see the European Cup photos on the wall, it’s an unbelievable club. I didn’t quite comprehend it, I’m too laid back.
‘I was 21 and went straight into Villa’s first-team. In a way, I should have gone into the reserves’ dressing room and learned my trade because it’s a much harder upbringing. The coaches there were Kevin MacDonald and Tony McAndrew and they were ruthless - and I needed that.
‘You’re in the first-team dressing room, you’re training with them, you feel you’re a first-team player - but you are nowhere near a first-team player. I had joined halfway through the season in a relegation dogfight, with the fans on the manager’s back, and there were no games for me.
‘You can play well in the reserves, but to get the trust of the first-team you need to be playing with them, even in pre-season games.
‘I had walked in as a kid from the League of Ireland - and I was having massive imposter syndrome. I was changing next to Shay Given, Stephen Ireland and Richard Dunne, people I had been watching on TV. Plus big money had been spent on players such as Darren Bent, Emile Heskey and Charles Nzogbia.
‘The dressing room was really intimidating at the start. I had Ciaran Clarke there, Barry Bannan, Andi Weimann, lads who were good for me. Yet they had come up from the Academy to earn their way into the first-team - whereas I had just walked in from Shamrock Rovers.
‘While, off the pitch, I lived in Sutton Coldfield town centre, in a big block of apartments, off the back of an ASK Italian. Eric Lichaj and Wiemann lived in the same block. Mine was a rented three-bedroom flat which had no TV or broadband when I arrived, so I would walk across the road to Blockbusters and rent DVDs. Otherwise I sat in an apartment on my own.’
Aston Villa bomb squad
Stevens would never play under McLeish, the manager who signed him. With Villa finishing two points above the Premier League relegation zone in 2011-12, the Scot paid the price in May 2012.
It was McLeish’s replacement, Paul Lambert, who handed Stevens his Villa debut in a Capital One Cup victory over Tranmere Rovers in August 2012, running out 3-0 winners.
By the end of his first full Villa Park season, he had totalled nine appearances in all competitions, including six Premier League starts. However, following a 1-0 home defeat to Southampton in January 2013, Stevens would never play for the Midlands club again.
Over the next two-and-a-half years, he was either overlooked for Villa duty or packed off on loan spells at Notts County, Doncaster (twice) and Northampton until his contract expired.
‘I came back in the summer of 2012 fit and strong, I felt like a different player, with Paul Lambert now in charge,’ said Stevens.
‘I played a few pre-season games and did relatively well, then we faced Werder Bremen in our last friendly (August 2012). We drew 3-3 and I didn’t have a good game at all. I failed to make Villa’s Premier League squad for the start of the season.
‘Tranmere in the Capital One Cup was my chance and I was in the team, but I did my hamstring after 67 minutes, so I was out for a while.
‘Then, in November, we played at Sunderland and were 1-0 up, but had gone through two left-backs in Joe Bennett and then Eric Lichaj, who both had to come off injured. As I was on the bench, I was brought on for my Premier League debut.
‘After that, I started successive games against Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal. Now that was a baptism of fire!
‘My fourth consecutive match was at home to Reading and, after 24 minutes, I was shielding the ball when Jobi McAnuff wiped me out and injured my ankle. I rushed back and had a shocker at Swansea on New Year’s Day, then gave a penalty away against Southampton. That was it, I was done. Lambert just didn’t fancy me after that.
‘The end-of-season meeting with the manager involved him telling me it was best I left. When I returned for pre-season in the summer of 2013, I was in the bomb squad with Stephen Ireland, Darren Bent, Alan Hutton, Stephen Warnock, Charles Nzogbia, Shay Given and Barry Bannan. It was crazy.
‘We went from a nice little glass plaque with your name on it to a yellow sticky note in the reserves’ dressing room.’
‘I was never fit until I met Paul Cook’
At the end of his contract following the culmination of Villa’s 2014-15 season, Stevens was released along with £18m signing Darren Bent and Dutch international Ron Vlaar.
There was a career lifeline, however, in the form of Pompey. In June 2015, he became the third signing of the Paul Cook era, following Kyle Bennett and Kal Naismith.
Just two years later, upon the expiry of his Fratton Park contract after 99 appearances and one goal, the Irishman left for Sheffield United as a League Two champion and The News/Sports Mail Player of the Season for 2016-17.
Under the guidance of Cook, plus regular first-team football in a successful Blues team, Stevens had flourished on the south coast.
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He departed having been included in both the EFL and PFA’s League Two Teams of the Year during that title-winning campaign, while, in each of his two Pompey campaigns, was chosen as the Players’ Player of the Season by team-mates.
Unveiled by the Blades on a three-year deal in May 2017, the left-back subsequently won two Championship promotions and made 72 Premier League appearances, in addition to featuring 26 times for the Republic of Ireland.
Following a two-year stay with Stoke, Stevens was released last summer and, in November, it was announced that, at the age of 35, he would be returning to where it all began - Shamrock Rovers.
The Irishman added: ‘I don’t think I was ever fit until I met Paul Cook at the age of 25. I didn’t know what fitness was until he became my manager.
‘I didn’t really get coached until that point, it was hard. Previously, it was just a bunch of men going in to play with 300 games under their belt - and I wasn’t confident.
‘Pompey was the big wake-up call’
‘Confidence came with fitness and, once I got extremely fit, I felt the game got easier for me. Pompey was the big wake-up call. I didn’t know about nutrition, I didn’t know about gym, I was way behind in those aspects.
‘I don’t think I had been listening, I was being mates with people and focusing solely on myself. Yet all that changed at Pompey because of the environment I was in.
‘You had Michael Doyle, Gary Roberts, Gaz Evans, these were fitness freaks. Doyle was at the front of all the runs, Gaz was one of the best runners I had ever seen and Robbo was the same. These were the older players!
‘I was a late bloomer in terms of the fact I just didn’t have it in me. I put a lot of credit down to Paul Cook because of the way he manages and the way he coaches. I kind of stopped getting coached when I left Ireland - and my coaching over there would have been completely different to Paul Cook’s coaching.
‘I put it down to meeting the right people at the right time. I was aged 25 and I needed a person like Paul Cook to take me to the next level - then I ended up meeting Chris Wilder, who took me to the next level again.
‘If only I could have met those people at 19. Yet it was the right time, the right place with Cookie. It was always in me, I just didn’t know it was in me. I owe him and Pompey everything.’
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