Retired footballer and now Sky Sports pundit Neil Mellor has outed Alan Irvine as the reason he joined Sheffield Wednesday on-loan in 2010.

Few careers are as short, but as interesting as Mellor's. He managed 241 first-team appearances for the likes of Liverpool, West Ham, Wigan Athletic, Preston North End and Sheffield Wednesday, but was forced into an early retirement in 2012.

Everyone remembers a fresh-faced Mellor breaking onto the scene with Liverpool - his debut for the club came way back in the 2002/03 season under Gerard Houllier.

Though after four seasons at Liverpool, Mellor's initial hype was quickly fading as he started a long and arduous battle with injury. He signed for Preston in 2006, and would go on to make 150 appearances over the next six years, scoring 43 goals.

He shone in the Championship and was looking like the player he promised to become, but after Irvine's Preston exit December 2009, Mellor would follow him to Wednesday at the start of the next season.

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"Alan Irvine was a big influence as to why I went to Sheffield Wednesday," Mellor told Lancashire Live. "He created an environment that I certainly thrived under and I was enjoying my football."

Irvine's Preston sacking upset a lot of fans, and his Wednesday dismissal in early 2011 did too.

"Again he left that football club a little unfairly with a change of ownership," continued Mellor, who had his most prolific season with Wednesday in the 2010/11 campaign after scoring 20 goals in 43 appearances across all competitions.

"It was difficult because I was speaking to my mates at Preston and when you lose that quality it was going to affect the performances on the pitch.

"When I eventually came back after my loan I couldn't believe the dressing room to the dressing room I had left. I had been used to players talking about the play-offs to a team that wasn’t good enough for the Championship. It was quite a contrast."

Wednesday fans saw the best of Mellor, who was forced to retire after that season. He was always a player with huge potential, and who knows where he might be today if he hadn't suffered so much.

The verdict

This is one of football's saddest stories - a young player who burst onto the scene like he did, only to have his dreams thwart in the cruellest of manners.

He still managed to have reputable career in the Football League. We saw glimpses of the player that he could've and should've become, but we'll never know how good he really was.