What would Shankly make of Liverpool's current plight?

Fifty years ago today, the charismatic Scot was named as manager at Anfield. Now his legacy is under pressure, writes Ian Herbert

(GETTY IMAGES )

Even in the footnotes of the event which changed the course of their history irrevocably, Liverpool find the brooding presence of Manchester United. "How would you like to manage the best club in the world?" Liverpool's chairman, Tom Williams, asked Bill Shankly after approaching him one autumn evening in the immediate aftermath of a defeat which bore out his conviction that his days at Huddersfield Town's helm were nearing an end. "Why?" asked Shankly, offering the first hint of the wit which bound him to his adoptive city like none other before or since. "Is Matt Busby packing it in?"

Shankly accepted and 50 years ago today was appointed at Anfield to begin the 15-year career which still defines the club. As the current custodians of his legacy remember him – "he is the No 1 when you think about Liverpool," Jamie Carragher reflected yesterday, "there have been a lot of great players and managers, but he was the man who started it all" – it is hard to avoid reflections on how he would have viewed the manager who now takes his old dugout seat.

With some initial suspicion, that much is sure. Shankly's xenophobic streak was one he never quite shook off, burnished as it was by the 1965 European Cup semi-final when Internazionale nobbled the Spanish referee Jose Maria Ortiz de Mendibil and cheated Liverpool out of the one cup which was never his and which Rafael Benitez captured so quickly. When Shankly took his club on a tour of the United States in the summer of 1964 he wore wristwatches showing US and British time and lived on the latter, rising from his bed at midnight and handing out team sheets at 3am.

But differences can be exaggerated between the complicated, private Benitez and Shankly, so bound to Liverpool that he made a Gerry and the Pacemakers anthem the club's own and drove his Ford Corsair through the streets of Toxteth to sign Ian Callaghan. As Benitez has bemoaned the infrastructure of his club, assuming control of the club's Kirkby academy having seen so few graduates since Carragher, so Shankly was appalled by what he walked into. At Melwood, a non-flushing toilet, no running water and bumpy practice pitches, one of which was also used for cricket. All that changed.

They both demanded money to spend, too. While it has been Benitez's misfortune to have been hitched to Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jnr, Shankly found Sir John Moores, both Liverpool and Everton's proprietor, appointing Eric Sawyer, one of his loyal Littlewoods Pools men, as financial director. Sawyer it was who removed the £12,000 ceiling on signings and sanctioned the outlay of £70,000 on Motherwell's Ian St John and Dundee United's Ron Yeats in the summer of 1961. Shankly, like Benitez, saw some serious failure in the transfer market, too. The £96,000 paid out for Tony Hateley from Chelsea was not money well spent. Alun Evans, from Wolves, didn't work out either.

But Shankly eclipsed all those before and since in the way he scoured teams from the Second, Third and Fourth Divisions, and constructed the side which, in the words of one biographer, he "squirrelled away" in the reserve team and brought out when he knew his mighty 1965 league winning side, 5-0 winners over West Ham United, Northampton Town and Everton, could take things no further. From Blackpool's Emlyn Hughes (£15,000) to Blackburn Rovers' Larry Lloyd, student Steve Heighway and Scunthorpe United's Ray Clemence (£18,000), whom he watched eight times out of a suspicion of left-footed goalkeepers which never left him, Shankly built a second team when his first one wore out.

In many ways his job was easier then that of Benitez. Shankly was operating before the end of restrictions on foreign players, when there was no evidence that imports could succeed as British exports had done. But he needed a ruthlessness. Phil Thompson, another of the discoveries from that time, has described St John's devastation at being marginalised by "that bastard", as he came to call Shankly.

Those who found themselves inside the circle found themselves blessed by a leader who had effects on the men before him that no manager since has touched. The stories are legion but the one about him telling his players that he had been watching from an upstairs bedroom at home while Everton's manager Harry Catterick ran his side into the ground in training was one of the best. The 5-0 thumping followed a day or two later.

It is hard to conceive of Shankly accepting some of the anaemic performances which have contributed to Liverpool's recent plight. "He would have lambasted them for lack of effort," said the 71-year-old St John, who sees Shankly in a different perspective these days. "If you're Liverpool and you've spent what they have, you expect the players to really play for the jersey. The fans are saying they don't look as if they want to play for Liverpool. It doesn't hurt them to lose."

Shankly quit Liverpool at the age of 60 in 1974, long before his time, presaging the tragedy of him returning to watch training sessions and being asked to leave. He died seven years later. His domestic silverware tally – two FA Cups, three titles – is modest but what wouldn't Benitez give for a fraction of that legacy?

Life, death & football Shankly in quotes

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

"Pressure is working down the pit. Pressure is having no work at all. Pressure is trying to escape relegation on 50 shillings a week. Pressure is not the European Cup or the Championship or the Cup final. That's the reward."

"The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they don't know the game."

"If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I'd pull the curtains."

"A lot of football success is in the mind. You must believe that you are the best and then make sure that you are. In my time at Liverpool we always said we had the best two teams in Merseyside, Liverpool and Liverpool reserves."

"If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing."

393 The number of matches won by Shankly during his time at Liverpool. His record read won 393, drawn 185, lost 175