Stubbs brings perspective to double date with destiny

To Everton's homely training ground in West Derby, its entrance barely wide enough to accommodate the modern footballer's fat four-wheel drive; hemmed in by neat suburban houses, one of which was bought many moons ago by the new Liverpool manager, a Mr Bill Shankly from Huddersfield Town. It was a handy spot, he must have felt, for a bit of spying, though he was more likely to joke about drawing the curtains if the old enemy were playing in his garden.

To Everton's homely training ground in West Derby, its entrance barely wide enough to accommodate the modern footballer's fat four-wheel drive; hemmed in by neat suburban houses, one of which was bought many moons ago by the new Liverpool manager, a Mr Bill Shankly from Huddersfield Town. It was a handy spot, he must have felt, for a bit of spying, though he was more likely to joke about drawing the curtains if the old enemy were playing in his garden.

And would the late, great Shanks still be cracking the one about the relative merits of football, life and death? Probably. Not Alan Stubbs, though. Everton's captain has a broader perspective on these matters than most of us, having been twice operated on for cancer. On the second occasion, a medical procedure too gruesome to mention over breakfast - or any other meal - a nurse told him: "There was a good chance you could have died."

The episode has shaped his subsequent career. Grateful as Stubbs was to Celtic, his club at the time, for their support, the chance to join his boyhood heroes Everton soon afterwards became too good to pass up, lest it should not come again. Returning south to his native Merseyside meant forgoing Champions' League football - forever, he must have assumed - but against all expectation the Blues are holding on to fourth position in the Premiership, a year after avoiding relegation by one place.

A win or draw at Anfield this afternoon against Liverpool, whom they finally beat 1-0 at home in December, and they will be exceptionally well placed for at the very least a first European campaign in a decade.

It is even longer ago - 1987 - when the self-styled "People's Club" last finished above their neighbours and, by winning the championship twice in three seasons, could reasonably claim to be No 1 in the Merseyside chart. In those days Stubbs was a teenaged supporter at the Gwladys Street end, his love for Everton undiminished by their rejection of him as a 13-year-old striker and his disdain for Liverpool inevitably compounded by the European ban their supporters at Heysel had brought down upon the whole of English football.

There is no reason, he insists to this day, why they could not have become European champions. "It was unfortunate circumstances, but that team had some great players and some who worked their socks off as well, one of the best balances of a team Everton have had for a long, long time. That's probably the last time Everton were really where they should be. It's taken a long time coming, with a lot of mistakes in between, but hopefully we're on the right path again."

In the past 20 years, every derby victory has been treated like a trophy in itself, Lee Carsley attaining iconic status with his winning goal before Christmas. There have been few meetings, however, as big as this one, which one excitable Evertonian described in the local evening newspaper last week as the most important game in the club's history.

Stubbs understandably demurs, but concedes: "It's the closest we've been to Liverpool going into the second derby of the season. Usually there's been a massive gulf, with Liverpool in the top five and Everton probably staving off the bottom five.

"It's going to be tense for both teams, because there's a lot of stake as a local derby and because of the fourth position as well. It is obviously important, even if we try and play it down as just another game. If we don't get beat, we know the gap won't get any smaller and that's our main target."

But how has this transformation come about, in a squad that lost Wayne Rooney, Tomasz Radzinski and now Thomas Gravesen, replacing them with the inexperienced Marcus Bent, Tim Cahill, and the barely used James Beattie? Stubbs gives much of the credit to the manager, David Moyes, now less rigidly disciplinarian, and a team meeting on the pre-season tour at which no verbal holds were barred. "It's a year on and he's a more experienced manager," says Stubbs. "We all learn from experience, managers included, and we've reaped the rewards from that.

"Last season was a backs-to-the-wall job and no matter what we did, this season was always going be a success because we couldn't really have got any worse to be honest. We had a meeting on the tour, we spoke to the manager and he spoke to individual players about why things had gone wrong. It was cards on the table. We'd all made mistakes and we all had to hold our hands up."

By the time of the equivalent talk-in this summer, Stubbs hopes to have agreed an extended contract and to be welcoming a clutch of new team-mates. Although well aware of the club's recent financial problems, he will clearly be upset if this season's gains are not built upon: "We've got a small squad and whether that squad could go through another season the way we have this season is another thing.

"We've been quite fortunate with injuries and suspensions, so I'd be surprised if come the beginning of next season we had less than 20 players. We need probably a squad of at least 24 to cover that challenge of Europe if we make it, so the board will have to give the manager money to invest and try to keep the club on the right lines. We don't want to go one step forward, two steps back."

And if that step falters at Anfield today against the ever-unpredictable Liverpool, Everton's captain will be more aware than most in that fanatical football city that it is not a matter of life and death. "There's a lot more to life than football and I'm sure people who've experienced [cancer] would have that perspective whatever [job] they do. I'm lucky enough to play football and don't get me wrong, I want to win badly. But if we get beat, we get beat. I've still got a family back home."