Naysmith thanks Smith for keeping faith after injury

Smith paid Heart of Midlothian £1.5 million for Gary Naysmith in 2001. By present standards, the left-back’s five years of service at Goodison almost qualifies him for a gold watch. However, even Naysmith acknowledges that he cannot compete with his club-mate, David Weir, when it comes returning an investment.

Weir was one of Smith’s first signings when he took over on Merseyside in 1998, also recruiting the centre-back for just £250,000 from Hearts, where he and Naysmith shared in the Edinburgh club’s Tennent’s Scottish Cup success that same year. That cup final at Celtic Park was Smith’s last match in charge of Rangers before his switch to Goodison but the pair obviously left their mark on him.

Naysmith and Weir are still in the manager’s debt. Smith has rekindled the international career of both; one after serious injury, the other after a “divorce” from the national team.

Naysmith says Smith calls Weir his “best-ever signing” but both men have a chance to reward him tomorrow as the trio return to the east end of Glasgow eight years after the occasion that shaped their lives.

Weir could earn his 49th cap against the Faeroe Isles, a figure that would have been more had it not been for his international retirement under Berti Vogts, but Naysmith will be grateful if he makes his 31st appearance after a season out of the Scotland picture because of an ankle injury that became infected after surgery before Smith brought him back in for the Kirin Cup success in Japan in May.

“I did a pre-season and I didn’t miss a session, so I’ve got my fitness back and played two of the first three Everton games of the season, so it’s good to be back,” Naysmith said yesterday at the Scotland training camp in Lanarkshire.

“I think what a lot of people didn’t realise is that I was back fit at Christmas, but because the team had started to pick up, I just couldn’t get in. When I eventually got back in March, people were thinking that was me just getting back, but I’ve not missed a day’s training since Christmas.

“It was good to get back into the Scotland fold in Japan. Under Walter, I’d only played in the Italy away game before those two matches as I missed a few matches through injury. The biggest thing for me is to be back playing regularly. Hopefully, I’ll play in these two Scotland games and keep playing when I get back to Everton. I’m like any footballer. If you can get a run of four, five or six games, you get your confidence and fitness up.”

Exactly a year ago, Naysmith was laid up in hospital as Scotland took on Italy and Norway in World Cup qualifying encounters. “It was very frustrating for me,” he said. “I was stuck in hospital. It especially hit home then as I was just sitting watching and missing it. I still had a long way to go to get back and was a long way from playing international football again. That was a hard time.

“I had an operation to tidy my ankle out and it became infected. The statistics say that for every 100 operations, there will be two or three that get an infection. Unfortunately, I was one of them. It was just one of those things.

“I was out for seven months with the ankle and I’d say that maybe half of that was down to the infection. I couldn’t move with it and I had to get help to even get to the toilet. I had a sort of vacuum system on my ankle that was putting in clean fluid and sucking out the infection, so I had to take that machine with me when I went to the toilet.”

His international absence was even harder to bear because Weir and James McFadden would return to the Everton training ground at Bellfield full of enthusiasm for the way Smith had turned the Scotland set-up around, and poor Naysmith would be struggling to impress his club manager, David Moyes, simply to get a reserve game.

“The manager [Moyes] is coming up for the Faeroes game,” Naysmith said. “In fact, at Everton, the manager, assistant [Alan Irvine] and first-team coach are all Scottish, so one always tries to come up and watch. They see this as a chance to watch international football. They’ll be all over the shop Saturday and Wednesday.

“It was hard, even if James and David weren’t in the squad, because of the squad’s results.
“We never had the greatest results in the games before I got injured and then the boys started picking up results. You want to be part of a team that is progressing. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head, but I think if you look at my last five or six games for Scotland before Japan, I don’t know if I had a win. So, it was disappointing and frustrating to miss out when they were winning.”

Weir, though, has always looked after Naysmith’s interests, right back to the days when the latter broke into the first team at Tynecastle as a teenager. Naysmith calls the 36-year-old, who is the oldest defender in the Barclays Premiership, his “father figure.”

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“I cannot speak highly enough of David,” Naysmith said. “I’ve played alongside him for nearly nine years and he is a top-drawer player. Walter Smith says he is the best signing he ever made in his managerial career in terms of value for money. David is a great professional and deserves to get 50 caps.

“I know he had his problems with the previous manager [Vogts] and he wasn’t happy about one or two things, but that is in the past. David has come back and not put a foot wrong. I was injured for the Faeroes game in 2002 when they held us to 2-2 over there [which prompted Weir to quit after criticism from Vogts] and the press coverage in England of Scottish football is not good. Just a page or so, so I never really saw what happened.

“I just got what Davie had said and he wasn’t too happy. He didn’t feel that it was in his best interests to keep playing, so I think he did the right thing for himself. There was no point in him going away if he wasn’t happy about things as he’s not the sort of man to let something prey on his mind.

“He’s been like father figure to me. I room with him at Everton and with Scotland. When I first moved down to Liverpool and I was in a hotel, he took me round to his house for Christmas dinner. Davie was always there for me if I needed advice and he was always the person I would go and see first, so I suppose you could say he was a father figure, even though he won’t be too happy being described as such.

“Look at the results since he’s come into the team, we’ve really picked up. His experience helps the younger players, but I do think defence is the position we’ve got the most experience in with Christian Dailly, Steven Pressley, Andy Webster and Gary Caldwell.

“However, David just talking us through games helps no end. I think he enjoys being back playing for his country. I think you can see that in his performances. I wasn’t surprised when Walter asked him back.

“We have made a lot of progress since Walter took over. Our results, especially away from home, have been good and we want to build on that. We beat Holland, drew with Germany and Italy at Hampden. Those are good results and we have to hope that continues. But first, we have to take care of the Faeroes.”

Taken from timesonline.co.uk