There are many significant dates in Liverpool FC’s history:
1892.
May 25th – 1977 and 2005.
Oct 13th 2010 – the date Hicks and Gillett were ousted in court, with Lord Grabiner QC and Justice Floyd both playing a blinder.
So as the TBT Advent Calendar is all about dates, let me add another date to that list, maybe the most significant date of them all – December 1st 1959.
The day a charismatic man with the James Cagney swagger and unmistakeable Scottish growl walked in through the Anfield doors for the first time.
The day the modern Liverpool Football Club was born.
What Bill Shankly found when he arrived was a club playing in the Second Division, training facilities that would embarrass Sunday morning park footballers and a stadium that wasn’t much better.
But that’s not what Shankly saw. Shankly saw a club that had been champions five times with large average attendances, even in the Second Division (I’m trying to avoid the ‘sleeping giant’ cliché here). From these unpromising beginnings, these crumbling ruins, Shankly set about building an empire, a dynasty, a powerhouse of the game, both at home and abroad. He set about making Anfield “a bastion of invincibility” that would strike fear into the hearts of visiting lambs to the slaughter.
He had the kit changed from red shirts/white shorts and socks to all red, because it looked more intimidating. He had the ‘This is Anfield’ sign put up to remind visitors what misery lay in store.
It’s fair to say Bill succeeded. However to succeed he needed money and the backing of the board. This was to be a familiar refrain throughout his reign. In these modern days when a foreign owner can contemplate changing to red the colours of a club who’ve always played in blue and are even nicknamed ‘Bluebirds’, where another can contemplate subjecting his own club’s fans to ridicule by calling them ‘Tigers’, and a third ownership regime can take one of the world’s blue riband football clubs to the precipice of extinction in a court room, Shankly’s famous quote – one of many – about the holy trinity in football seems a distant memory:
“At a football club, there’s a holy trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques”.
So what made Shankly such a Messiah figure to the Liverpool fans? His record was good but paled against what was to follow. He won promotion from the second tier followed by two titles, with the club’s first ever FA Cup sandwiched in between, he also guided the club to its first ever European final. He then built a completely new side to win the League and UEFA Cup double in 1972/3 (the club’s first European trophy, which opened the floodgates) and finally the FA Cup again in 1974. OK, three titles, two FA Cups, a UEFA Cup and a Second Division title, plus two defeats in FA Cup and European Cup Winners Cup finals in just under 15 years makes his managerial record at Anfield far from shabby Until, that is, you start comparing it with his successor Bob Paisley and then Kenny Dalglish in his mid/late 80s spell. And indeed Joe Fagan, who won the league, European Cup and League Cup in his first season and reached the European Cup Final again in his second and final year in charge.
So what made Shankly stand out? Liverpool supporters instantly know when a manager has ‘got’ the club. It’s a vital attribute for the job. Kenny Dalglish and Rafa Benitez got it. Roy Hodgson palpably didn’t. The start that Brendan Rodgers has had suggests he might.
Bill Shankly did much more than just ‘get’ Liverpool FC. He defined what getting Liverpool FC actually means. A modestly talented guitarist can copy a famous guitar solo note for note and sound almost identical. I can type the Complete Works of Shakespeare, given a little time, and it’ll look the same. However they’re not exactly comparable achievements with creating the original, establishing the template. That’s what Shankly did. He invented it, and it’s something every subsequent Liverpool manager is judged by. Score highly on the Shankly-o-meter and you’re sound.
After a playing career with Carlisle Utd and notably Preston North End (scoring his first goal for them in a 2-2 draw at Anfield of all places), the man from the mining community of Glenbuck, Ayrshire, turned to management, initially with his old club, Carlisle. They were a struggling Third Division North club, but in an echo of what was to come, Shankly turned Brunton Park into something of a fortress. He would tell his players how tired the opposition must be at having to travel up to such a remote corner of the country – another foretaste of the famed Shankly psychology of knocking down the opposition and building up his own players.
Around this time, when Liverpool manager George Kay had to resign for health reasons, Liverpool called Shankly to ask if he’d like to be considered for the manager’s job but, as the great man explained:
“The big snag had cropped up when the Liverpool board had said the manager could put down his team for matches and the directors would scrutinise it and alter it if they wanted to. So I just said, “If I don’t pick the team, what am I manager of?””
He went to Grimsby Town instead, but quit disillusioned in January 1954 citing a lack of ambition by the club. Within days he was manager at Workington, which had only been a League side for two years and forced to apply for re-election at the end of both seasons. By the end of the season 1954/55 they finished eighth in Third Division North. Already in his managerial career, there had been signs of what was to come.
In November 1955, Shankly joined Huddersfield Town, initially as assistant manager but he manager a year later, and giving a 16-year old striker called Denis Law a debut.
When he finally arrived at Anfield at the end of 1959, Shankly immediately felt at home. He sensed a kinship with the supporters from the start. They were his kind of people – honest, direct, passionate, not taking kindly to affectation. They sensed it too. The bond was to last to this day.
With the backing of Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan, he set about rebuilding the team, improving the club’s training conditions, changing its training routines, clearing the squad of dead wood and perhaps most importantly of all, instilling belief.
He also set about trying to convince the club’s directors to put their hands in their pockets so he could strengthen the team. It was a key step towards his distant goals, and two fellow Scots were to prove key signings in that process; Ron Yeats and Ian St John.
In the 1961/62 Liverpool were promoted, and just two seasons later they were crowned champions. A first European Cup campaign led to controversial semi-final defeat against Inter Milan, but all the time the club and the manager were learning. In May 1965 the long-coveted FA Cup, the first in the club’s history, finally came, followed the season after by another title and the club’s first European final, just before the World Cup in England. Liverpool lost the European Cup Winners’ Cup final 2-1 to Borussia Dortmund at Hampden Park, with Roger Hunt scoring to preface his successful World Cup campaign.
After a chastening, humiliating 5-1 defeat by an Ajax team that no one had heard or rated, but did feature a young Johan Cruyfff, Shankly turned Liverpool into the most European side in England which served Liverpool well for nearly 30 years.
The period between 1966 – 1973 was a long fallow one in which Liverpool were always challengers, always a force, always qualifying for Europe, but trophies kept eluding them. However the signing of a young Emlyn Hughes from Blackpool in 1967 was to prove inspirational later, as Emlyn would go on to lift a vast number of trophies, becoming the first Liverpool captain to lift the European Cup not he way when he raised ‘Ol Big Ears in Rome, grin as wide as the Mersey. He repeated it at Wembley a year later.
A 1-0 FA Cup defeat at Second Division Watford in 1970 prompted Shankly to break up the old guard and launch a new regime. In came Ray Clemence, Kevin Keegan, John Toshack, Steve Heighway, Peter Cormack, Larry Lloyd, Brian Hall and Alec Lindsay. Only Ian Callaghan, Tommy Smith, Peter Thompson and Chris Lawler survived he cull. Shanks could be ruthless, there was no room for sentiment when his beloved Liverpool was concerned.
Liverpool lost the 1971 FA Cup Final to double-winners Arsenal (featuring one Ray Kennedy, a striker who later went on to be Shankly’s last purchase at Liverpool), but a new dynasty was being assembled. By 1972/73 Liverpool were champions again, and they won the UEFA Cup too, in a two-legged final against Borussia Moenchengladbach – who they would meet four years later in Rome’s Olympic Stadium in the European Cup Final. With teams that finished second, third and fourth in their respected leagues entering the UEFA Cup in those days, it was a great deal stronger than today’s Europa League. Shankly also won Manager of the Year in 1973, the one and only time.
It was a huge shock when Shankly announced he was quitting so soon after winning the FA Cup. It’s been well documented that things became difficult between himself and the club afterwards. It was a difficult situation. Shankly still wanted to help Liverpool, but the club wanted a clean break, perhaps with an eye to the way things had unravelled across at Old Trafford post-Busby – from European champions in 1968 to relegation in 1974.
Shankly said he would have been honoured if he had been invited to become a Director of the club, but the offer never came. He suffered a heart attack and died shortly afterwards on 29 September 1981. His legacy is not just in the gates that bear his name or the statue at the back of the Kop. Shankly was the father of the modern-day Liverpool. It was Shankly who first turned Liverpool into one of the great powers of English and European football. It was Shankly who made Anfield a place for opposition teams to fear. It was Shankly who wrote the blueprint for ‘The Liverpool Way’
There are far too many famous Shankly quotes for inclusion here, and you know most of them anyway,but if I close my eyes I can still hear that voice, and that staccato delivery, saying:
“Some people – like to use big words – to try to impress people – but eeeh – here at Liverpool – WE DON’T.’
His thick accent is something I’ll never forget:
“Tadee we pleed wee greet coheesion …”
Ah there can never be another like him and I still miss him terribly.
