PHIL Neville admits he considered quitting football early last season after a foot injury ruined his self-belief.

The 34-year-old captain missed five games after picking up the problem in Everton’s opening day defeat at Blackburn, and says he struggled on his return.

Neville made his come-back in the ill-fated Carling Cup third round giant-killing by League One side Brentford, and claims it was enough to make him question his future in the game. He said: “At the start of the season, and particularly after the Blackburn game, when you come back from injury you question yourself.

“I was questioning myself whether I was good enough to be a footballer again, I was contemplating retirement at the time but the manager told me to snap out of it and so did my family and I’ve had a great season.”

Neville, who turned down a £500,000 move to Champions League chasing Spurs in January, says the low-point eventually spurred him on, and he now looks back upon the campaign as one of his most enjoyable in a blue shirt.

And the former England international says he feels capable of playing two further seasons in the Premier League before turning his focus to a career in coaching.

“From a personal point of view it’s been one of most enjoyable seasons,” he said. “I’ve personally enjoyed it more than any other one, I feel as fit as I ever have and from the start of the season where I though it might be my last I’m now thinking I want to continue for as long as possible and at least the next two seasons - hopefully at Everton.”

Neville’s leadership was crucial to Everton’s impressive form in the second half of the season, as they achieved an impr-obably strong finish in the face of a disappointing spell.

He said: “The three games against Reading, Brentford and Bolton were probably real low points.

“Reading in the FA Cup was absolutely catastrophic - you can’t say anything more than that, we’d just beaten Chelsea and we thought it was going to be our year again – we’re going to turn it around and get to Wembley and then we get beat by Reading.

“As captain my style is to lift the spirits in a jovial way, I do like to raise my voice sometimes but the best way to get confidence back in players is to have a laugh and a joke and to build team spirit and this year it’s been needed on a number of occasions.

“But with the team spirit we’ve got we all just seem to pull together, that’s the pleasing thing about being captain of this group of players, that when we lose at Bolton or against Brentford or Reading it’s not just one or two that have to raise the spirits, the whole team pull together.”