Bill Shankly served Liverpool with distinction between 1959 and 1974, but he had turned down the club’s approach eight years previous, and here’s why.
When Shankly arrived in 1959, the club was in a state of disrepair, stuck in a perpetual cycle in the Second Division and they desperately needed an exit strategy.
The Scot got straight to work, transforming the ethos of the club into one of seasoned winners and laying the foundations of the decades of success to follow.
Shankly was lured from Huddersfield Town on December 14, 1959, but Liverpool had attempted to bring him in earlier and would have been successful if not for the directors’ need for control.
Chris Shankly-Carline, Shankly’s grandson, tells the story: “He came to Liverpool in 1959 from Huddersfield but Liverpool actually approached him eight years earlier in 1951.
“He was at Carlisle, that was his first managerial job. He had been at Carlisle as a player initially and they approached him to take over the job at Liverpool.
“He drove all the way to Liverpool for an interview, sat down with the board and they basically said, ‘You won’t have full control of the team, we will an input into picking some of the players’.
• READ: 10 of Bill Shankly’s best Liverpool FC quotes
“He quite famously turned around to them and said, ‘Well, what’s the point because what would I be manager of?’
“He rejected the job offer there and then and drove back to Carlisle that night, and a fun little family fact is that night my nan went into labour with my mum.
“So my mum was born the night he first rejected the Liverpool job!”
Quite the story, but we all know that was not the end of it.
Bill is a savvy fella!
Thankfully, the board’s inability to cede control did not turn Shankly off Liverpool for good as there was a different outcome when they came knocking again eight years later.
“Fast forward eight years, he’s been at Grimsby, Workington, Huddersfield and Liverpool come back in for him and make him a second offer,” Shankly’s grandson further explained.
“He turns around to them and tells them what he wants, there’s no suggestion that they’re going to have an input into picking the team so he agrees to take the job.
“Ever the shrewd guy he was, he’s made sure they’ve written that into his deal so they can’t have him off.”
Shankly knew his worth from the off and he was not going to allow Liverpool’s board members to have a say in his team, as the series of clauses in his eventual contract showed.
One such clause read: ‘Have the full right of selection of players to play in any match’.
Thankfully, the club learned from their earlier mistake and agreed to Shankly’s terms to start a story of legend that will continue to reverberate for generations to come.
It is only right we leave you with this famous Shankly quote:
“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.”
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