“He is probably a player who doesn’t get a lot of credit for the type of role he does, a holding midfielder who broke play up,” says Coleman of someone who shipped more than his fair share of media criticism even as successive managers at club and international continued to show faith in him. “You don’t get as many caps as he has done without being a very good international footballer.

“It’s a funny game. We were all aware of the criticism that he would have been getting at the time but I think it says a lot about him that he came in for every international trip and he did his job, which was to keep the manager happy and to help the team. I don’t think the papers or opinions really interested him. That showed a great strength of his character. At the time football was changing a lot and we were playing two centre-midfielders and teams were playing three in the middle. It was tough for but it’s part and parcel of football, we all get criticism at times. But he was never bothered by it. He just kept the same standards no matter what.”

On a related theme, Coleman rejects the suggestion that the animated celebration of his recent goal for Everton against Brighton was a reaction to criticism he’d been receiving from the faithful at Goodison Park.

“A lot has been made of that celebration but I wasn’t getting stick at Goodison at all,” he maintains. “I came back from my foot injury and I probably wasn’t happy with how I played in a couple of games and you are aware that you are not playing well. You look back on most of my goal celebrations and they are quite aggressive, quite emotional. I have done a few where I have cupped my ears. It was a bit of everything - it was my first goal in a long time and I was a bit frustrated with how I’d played in the previous game against Manchester United. It was just a bit of emotion.”

But he doesn’t deny that he did feel he had a point to prove.

“I think my whole career has been about proving points,” he says. “As a footballer, your career isn’t just like that (indicates an upward graph)), it has its ups and downs, and that goal came at a good time for me. But my relationship with the fans is great. That night in January when I came back from my leg-break, the reception I got, it’s something that will stay with me for a long time. The majority of the fans have always been amazing, so there is no story there as such.”

In January, it will be ten years since Coleman joined Everton from Sligo Rovers - “a bit of a scary thought,” he says with a smile. That he arrived at Goodison for a song – £60,000 – is, appropriately enough, still celebrated in song at the ground.

“Ah yeah, it is something I’m proud of,” he says. “I know it was ten years ago but it’s a nice story for me to have come for that price and to have given the club quite a lot of appearances. It’s a song I like hearing when it’s being sung.”

Unusually in the modern era, the 30-year-old Coleman seems to regard himself as a one-club man and, despite reports in the past which variously linked him with moves to Manchester United and Bayern Munich, he insists that he was “never close” to leaving the Toffees.

“There was interest from numerous teams but I never looked for a way out,” he says. “That’s me sitting here telling you the truth. Whatever went on between clubs went on, but I’ve always been happy at Everton. You can look back and people can say you need to push on, you need to win things, you need to go to the top. But Everton brought me from Sligo, and they’ve been good to me.

“Loyalty is not really a thing any more as such, but for me I feel good there, I feel they have done a lot for me. I know football: maybe five or ten bad appearances, and fans, the media, they’ll be wanting other players in. But, for me, Everton is where I want to be. And, as I keep saying, to win one cup there would mean more to me than winning it somewhere else.”