Liverpool FC Forum

[Bermenstein]

Liverpool FC History-An education in Progress

I wanted to start this thread with a view to educating first & foremost myself, and anybody else who cares to read this thread, in the glorious history and tradition of this great football club. So in creating this thread, i am researching the great & not so great years of LFC past up to the present day.

I am also going to be creating a project of this same thread in blog format over on the blogger.com website, which I will link from here.

I welcome any comments and opinions to this thread as always, but I would appreciate if you, fellow LFC Fans and Newkit members,  let me update the thread as I see fit. By all means correct me if there are any minor or glaring errors in this thread, as any help is welcome in recreating the “Facts” © (R.Benitez) that i present to you.

As I was born in 1974, i only began to take an intrest in soccer from about 1982 (Age 8) onwards. SO I have alot to learn and look forward to, in publishing this project to newkit.co.uk.

I will begin the project post world war II , in the 1953-54 season. So if you think things are not so good now, wait till you revisit 1953-54 season.


A Brief History Of Liverpool FC Time
Up tp 1954

Liverpool F.C. was founded following a dispute between the Everton F.C. Committee and John Houlding, club president and owner of the land at Anfield. After eight years at the stadium, Everton relocated to Goodison Park in 1892 and Houlding founded Liverpool F.C. to play at Anfield.

Originally named Everton F.C. and Athletic Grounds Ltd (Everton Athletic for short), the club became Liverpool F.C. in June 1892 after The Football Association refused to recognise the club as Everton. In its debut season, the team won the Lancashire League, before joining the Football League Second Division at the start of the 1893–94 season. After finishing in first place, the club was promoted to First Division, which it won in 1901, and again in 1906. The club won back-to-back league championships in 1922 and 1923, but did not win another trophy until the 1946–47 season when the club won the First Division for a fifth time (This was the recommencing of the FA Leagues after WWII).

After losing 1–0 to Burnley F.C. in the club's first FA Cup final in 1914, Liverpool was defeated in the final for a second time in 1950 by Arsenal. The club was relegated to the Second Division in the 1953–54 season.


NB : In any images where there are scores or results, Liverpool are always the First marked score.

Example

22.08.1959  2 - 3  Cardiff         Ninian Park  (Lpool loose 2-3 away)
09.09.1959  2 - 0  Scunthorpe  Anfield        (Lpool win 2-0 Home)
12.12.1959  2 - 0  Bristol Rvrs  Eastville St. (Lpool win 2-0 away)

[Bermenstein]

WWII
With the onset of World War II in the year 1939, the proffesional Football Association of England would suspend all competitions until the wars end in 1945. In the decade of the 1930’s, Liverpool were an average 1st Division Mid Table team. But to the war, soccer would loose out on some of its shining stars. Not on the battlefield, but on the enforced closure of the football fields.

George Kay's Liverpool
With the 1939-40 Season just 3 games old, the League competitions were abandoned. Unfortunatly it was for Liverpool, and their then manager, George Kay,  at this time, as their squad was beginig to resemble that of a title winning side


With players such as Phil Taylor (Future Manager),  Jack Balmer (formerly of Everton), Billy Liddell and a certain Matt Busby (Yes, He who went on to achieve astonishing feats as Man Utd manager. played 125 times for Lpool), Liverpool would effectively loose these players possible best years to the war.

With the exception of Billy Liddell, who had youth on his side, he played for Liverpool post WWII up till 1960 and experienced some of the highs with Liverpool, but also the slide into division 2. Billy Liddel turned down numerous chance to play in Div 1 with others teams, but he stayed committed to the Liverpool cause. Unfortunatly for him, Liverpool would not come out of Division 2 in his remaining playing years. But such was his talent, he remained a 1st choice, and 1st class international player for Scotland.

So with the Wars end in 1945, the Football Association of England would recommence its Football Leagues in 1946 and Liverpool would win the first Post WWII Division 1 Title for the 1946-47 Season


But it was a mighty close thing. A hard winter meant that a season which had begun at the end of August didn’t finish until the start of June. Liverpool, Manchester United, Wolverhampton Wanderers & Stoke City were all in with a chance of taking the title as the season reached its climax. Liverpool’s final fixture was against Wolves at Molineux. The hosts had 56 points, the visitors 55. Liverpool had to win … and then wait and hope. They did their part of the job by winning 2-1, other results went their way and the Reds were champions of the Football League for a 5th time. It was George Kay’s finest moment as a football manager.


But This would be Liverpool's best season for quite awhile. The club was about to Walk through a storm, and experience some Dark Days. But with various managers, they would keep searching for the Golden Sky.


So I am going to take up the story to the 1953-54 Season
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Liverpool Honours up to 1953-54
1st Div 5
FA Cup 0
LgeCup Not Established
Europe Not Established

1953-1954 Dark Days

For the first look at LFC history, The 1953-54 season is the year we go back to and to start the project.

Up to this point, Liverpool had won 5 top division  titles, and the best they could do in the FA cup since its inception in 1872 up to this point, was to be loosing finalists on 2 occasions, first to Burnley in 1914 and then to Arsenal in 1950.

The League cup was not established yet (Not till 1960) & the European Cup (Now Champions League) would be established in 1955.

So the 1953-54 season began with manager Don Welsh in charge of Liverpool for his 3rd full season after signing for Liverpool in march 1951, after taking over from George Kay, who became ill and had to resign. It would be one of Liverpool FC’s darkest seasons ever.

Don Welsh started his managerial career at Brighton & Hove Albion in 1947. He was then 36 years old. It wasn’t a great start. Brighton finished bottom of the Third Division (South) at the end of the 1947-48 season but there was no automatic relegation in those days and it was very hard for a club to enter the Football League at the expense of another that had been established there for a while, however poor their results were. Brighton recovered to finish 6th and 8th in the next two years before Liverpool came calling for Welsh’s services.

Unfortunately, Don inherited a Liverpool team that had been stagnating in mid-table for a few seasons and a Board of Directors that didn’t seem particularly ambitious. The team relied too much on the mercurial Billy Liddell, who had become so important and influential that some supporters nicknamed the club “Liddellpool” in his honour.

But even Liddell couldn’t stop the team’s slide down the table and in 1954 they finished bottom of the pile with only 9 victories and just 28 points.
The 1953/54 English Football League Division 1 Champions were Wolverhampton Wanders. This season an event took place that is almost unthinkable in the modern English Premier League with Liverpool finishing bottom of England's 1953 Football League First Division. Liverpool fc would remain outside the English top flight (8 Years) until winning the 1961-1962 English Football Second Division. Wolves' were managed by Stan Cullis whom would take the Wolverhampton club onto two further League Titles. Under Cullis Wolverhampton Wanderers would win the 1957-58 English Football League Division 1 Championship and the 1958/59 Football League Division 1 Championship.

And in an Ironic twist, Everton would be promoted in this same year from Div 2 as runners-up, to be the main team on mersey side in Div 1 for the foreseeable future.

Managers were more likely to survive relegation then and Welsh kept his job but the writing was on the wall when the club could only manage an 11th place finish in Division 2 the following season. Don spent a lot of money for the time but a lot of it was on players who were either past their best or didn’t show the form they had been deemed capable of.

Don Welsh was not a success as Liverpool manager, however much he wanted to join the club following his popularity as a war-time guest player and however hard he tried to turn things around after succeeding George Kay. The 1950’s was not a good decade for Liverpool Football Club, apart from reaching a cup final at the start (1950 v Arsenal) and appointing Bill Shankly at the end. Maybe Don Welsh was the wrong man at the wrong time? Unfortunately, the club was in a worse state when he departed than when he arrived and the next appointment would be crucial. Liverpool decided to keep things ‘in the family’ and turned to former skipper Phil Taylor, who had retired as a player after the relegation of 1954 but had stayed with the club on the coaching staff.

So Liverpool would slip into Division 2 for the 1954-55 season.
They would be the 5th most succesful team in England to date, with Arsenal(1st) & Aston Villa(2nd) topping the overall titles list.

But how quickly could Liverpool return to the top flight?


Next: 8 Years in Limbo - 2nd Division Football (1954-1962)

[Benny The Noon]

Great idea mate and will be reading anytime you update it . Where are you getting the info from ?

[Igor Zidane]

First correction  mate , it's football not soccer . Yours faithfully Mr pedantic . Very good idea this and will help to educate one or two along the way .

[Bermenstein]

Great idea mate and will be reading anytime you update it . Where are you getting the info from ?

I'm getting it from Lfchistorty.net and footballstatisticsresults.com mostly...

[roberto green]

Great idea mate and will be reading anytime you update it . Where are you getting the info from ?

Wikipedia

[Sabre]

Much appreciated Bermenstein mate, I'll be a lurker of this thread.

[Bermenstein]

8 Years in Limbo - 2nd Division Football (1954-1962)

So the 1954-55 season had Liverpool in Division 2 with Don Welsh still at the helm, seemingly given a chance to bring Liverpool right back up to the 1st division. But Welsh would fail at the first attempt in the 54-55 season, finishing 11th and would see Liverpool suffer their heaviest ever loss by 9-1 (Club Record Defeat) at St Andrews against Birmingham City, the eventual Div2 winners of that year.



Amazingly, Welsh would manage Liverpool for the following season aswell (1955-56). This season would see a marked improvement in the performances on the pitch, but not enough to see them promoted back to the top flight. They would finish 3rd, missing out on promotion by 4 points.



Off Topic Back in Division 1 at the end of the 55-56 season, newly crowned Champions and Liverpool's arch rivals, Man Utd were playing with a certain verve and veracity, that seen them easily win the title in a canter. They would win the title the following year in style. They were managed by a certain ex-Liverpool player, Matt Busby.

Matt Busby was offered a job by Liverpool previously in 1945, as an assistant manager to George Kay.However, his views on how football should be played and governed were not shared by the Liverpool board and Busby chose instead to take the manager's post at Manchester United in October 1945.It was a bold step for him to take at Old Trafford with no previous managerial experience behind him.

With hindsight, it is perhaps unfortunate that his disagreements with the Liverpool Board in 1945 caused him to look elsewhere for his post-war employment. However, Liverpool supporters can at least be grateful to Busby for being the man who contacted Liverpool manager George Kay at Anfield suggesting he take a look at a lad called Liddell. Busby later said that the day Liddell arrived on Merseyside was "a very fortunate day for Liverpool". Indeed it was!   

Back on Topic--So after 2 seasons with Don Welsh in Division 2, The directors believed that a change was needed  and Welsh was dismissed towards the end of the 1955-56 season and not given another chance to take Liverpool back into the top division. Liverpool were to be under the guidance of new boss and ex-player Phil Taylor for the new season of 56-57.

"Click on the following link for a fantastic insight into the era in which Liverpool were relegated to the old 2nd Division, by John Martin."
Liverpool life in the 2nd division (1954) by John Martin

Phil Taylor- The New Liverpool Boss

Phil Taylor is mainly known as the only Liverpool boss never to manage the club in the 1st division. Taylor had been connected with Liverpool Football Club for over 20 years when he was asked to succeed Don Welsh at the end of the 1955-56 season.

Born in Bristol, he had been a schoolboy international for England before playing for one of his home-town clubs (Rovers) as first an amateur and later a professional. He was signed by Liverpool in March 1936 for £5,000, which was not an insignificant sum for an 18 year old at the time. Already a first-team regular when barely out of his teens, Phil’s professional playing career was cut short by the Second World War as it was for many of his contemporaries. But while many of his colleagues were too old to play again when the war was over, Phil was relatively young at 27 with many good playing years still in front of him. His best period was immediately after the war when he won a championship winners’ medal (1947; Liverpool were the 1st team post WWII to win Div1) and played in an FA Cup final (1950). His three full England caps came in 1947 as well. He was a solid and reliable half-back and a natural choice to replace Jack Balmer as club captain.

After his playing days, Phil had two years on the coaching staff at Liverpool before being invited to take over the role of manager but this was a completely different responsibility. Sometimes people are ‘too nice to be a manager’, the suggestion being that you need a bit of a ruthless streak in you because it is such a risky and competitive business. Maybe not so much in the 1950’s as in more modern times but perhaps this applied to Phil? Perhaps he found it difficult being remote from players he had been on the same level with just a short time earlier? Whatever the reasons, Phil found the pressure of getting Liverpool back into the top division almost intolerable.




Next : New Manager, New Hopes

[Bermenstein]

1956-57 New Manager, New Hopes
Phil Taylors first season (1956-57) would see Liverpool finish 3rd with Billy Liddel scoring 21 league goals, but missing promotion by 1 point. They would not have a good cup run. Lpool would be dumped out of the FA Cup 3rd round, away at Southend, 2-1.


So a good start to Taylors managerial career at Liverpool. A renewed confidence seemed evident, and maybe Liverpool could make a quick return to Division 1.


The 1957-58 season would see Liverpool finishing 4th. But it was agonisingly close for promotion, with the top 4 teams seperated by just 3 points.



Liverpool would draw their last 2 games of the season, after winning their previous 6 in a row, to just miss out on promotion.


Taylor admitted that "the strain of trying to win promotion has proved too much."It was becoming a draining struggle season after season from the mid 50's for Liverpool trying to return to the top flight in English Football. So what would the following year hold after such an exhausting struggle in the 57-58 season?

Off Topic Ex-Lpool player, Now Man Utd manager, Matt Busby and his team would be involved an Air Accident in Munich Germany, after a European Cup game in February 1958. It would see The future destiny of Man Utd altered. Busby was seriously injured & given his last rights. He was released from hospital 9 weeks later


1958-59
The 1958-59 season would see Liverpool finish 4th again in the 2nd division, but they were never really in contention for a promotion of this season.


But in July of 1958, Phil Taylor signed a young 20 year old player by the name of Roger Hunt from Stockton Heath for FREE.

Although it would be a year later that he would make his debut, with a goal, against Southampton in a 2-0 win at Anfield. He would also become the clubs top scorer in his 1st full term for the 58-59 season. Could this young English Striker be a shining light for the future of LFC?

1959-60
But Chairman Tom (T.V.) Williams patience were running out, and he had ambitions that certainly surpassed some of his predecessors. Although Taylor hung on until November 17, 1959 one suspects that a terrible F.A. cup defeat to non-League Worcester City 1959-60 season, hastened his departure from the manager’s seat.

Taylor admitted that "the strain of trying to win promotion has proved too much." After a superb 23 years at the club a sorrowful Phil Taylor spoke to the Liverpool Daily Post about his decision:

"No matter how great has been the disappointment of the Directors at our failure to win our way back to the first division, it has not been greater then mine. I made it my goal. I set my heart on it and strove for it with all the energy I could muster. Such striving has not been enough and now the time has come to hand over to someone else to see if they can do better."

It was a shame things hadn’t worked out for Phil Taylor as Liverpool manager. But with Liverpool now languishing in the 2nd division, they needed to find someone who could resurect the club from the mire of  Div 2. They needed someone with Confidence, Someone with "The Knowledge" and someone whose methods were certainly different from some of his contemporaries.



The man that would follow Phil Taylor would change the fortunes of Liverpool Football Club for ever.







Next: A New Sense of Purpose!!

"The change that came over the place was incredible. Where there had been the nice approach of Phil Taylor, now there was this bristling, rasping fellow like James Cagney, who was setting out to conquer the world. Everything changed. Suddenly everyone was walking about with a new sense of Purpose" Roger Hunt on Bill Shankly

[Bermenstein]

New Sense Of Purpose

Bill Shankly was never short of confidence in his own ability. Referring in his autobiography to his feelings about this first managerial appointment at Carlisle United in March 1949, he said "I had the knowledge".


I had been with people who knew how to train teams and I had my own conception of human beings and psychology.” His methods were certainly different from some of his contemporaries. He was prepared to do any job however menial and instead of writing notes in the programme for the supporters to read, he preferred to use the tannoy to speak to them shortly before the start of each home fixture.

Shankly was approached by Liverpool chairman Tom Williams and offered the Liverpool job following Phil Taylor’s resignation. He knew immediately there was more ambition and potential at Anfield than there had ever been at Leeds Road (Huddersfield) and this time he wouldn’t take No for an answer when it came to signing players he knew would improve the squad and give them a better chance of promotion.

1959-60 (19.12.59 First Game) with Bill Shankly

So Bill Shankly took control of Liverpool FC from Phil Taylor in Decmber 1959.
And his first game in charge was against promotion candidates Cardif City.
Bill Shankly, normally one of Soccer's most outspoken characters, was a very subdued man after sitting through his first match as Liverpool manager. Right from the start, Shankly was made to realise the tremendous task that lied ahead of him as this shabby Liverpool team was humbled by a Cardiff side wearing an unmistakable promotion look.

Liverpool were beaten 4-0 by Cardiff City, at Anfield!!

Match Report

His second game away to Charlton Athletic on Boxing Day didnt fare much better, loosing the game 3-0 at the valley. So not a great opening week for Bill Shankly. But these 2 games for Bill, gave him an insight into the work that he needed to carry out.

But Shankly would steady matters greatly on the pitch from here on till the end of the season, loosing only 4 games, compared to the 9 lost before he took over in December 59, and without signing any additional players for the remainder of the season.


With Liverpool lingering dangerously near the bottom of Division 2 when he came in, Shankly would manage to get a 3rd place finish in the half-season since he had taken the reigns of the club.



1960-61: Shankly's First Full Season In Charge

With his first Full season in charge, Shankly had his eye on a few players he wanted to bring into the club. While manager at Huddersfield, he was very keen on bringing Ian St John and Ron Yates to Leeds Road, but the Huddersfield board would not part with the cash needed, which frustrated Bill immensley.

Now at Liverpool in his first season, he would have to bide his time in making an approach for St.John and Yates. He delved into the market and signed 3 players early in the season, and 1 at the end of the season. Better late than never, he got 1 of his men, Ian St John.



St John would not play till the following season, but the 3 others who he aquired for Liverpool in Kevin Lewis, Gordon Milne and Alf Arrowsmith, were all fine players.

Kevin Lewis would be top scorer in his first season with 19 league goals, and the unselfish Gordon Milne would play on the Right Side of Midfield. Alf Arrowsmith would feature more in the following season. He was described as a born goalscorer by Shankly but he would be dreadfully unlucky with injuries.

An innconsistent start & sloppy end to the 60-61 season would lead to another frustrating 3rd place finish & non-promotion season for Liverpool. They were solid from the middle of September up till Christmas of 60-61, but there was a chink in the armour that had to be eradicated.


Also this was the year the League cup began, with Liverpool beating Luton town 6-3 on aggregate in the 2nd round. But the League Cup experience would be short lived, with a 2-1 defeat at Anfield by Southampton in round 3.


With Ian St John added for the new 61-62 season, it was time to get the other fella, Ron Yates.

Next : 1961-62  At the End of a Storm, Is A Golden Sky!

"He was inspirational. If he told you, you were going to hell, you would look forward to the trip."
                                      Keegan on Shankly in 2008

[RED BEERGOGGLES]

Thanks for taking the time to compile this Berm it will make for avid viewing ....once again great Idea and  cheers mate

[metalhead]

can this thread be pinned?

[Bermenstein]

Tnx Metalhead & Red Beer Goggles

[Bad Bob]

can this thread be pinned?

Err, yes actually. 

[Bermenstein]

Tnx to those who requested the "Sticky" for this thread
Will do my best to keep it updated & accurate.

I feel privilaged