by JohnBull » Wed Dec 14, 2005 11:05 pm
Ciggy - Nice bit of fiction there girl but why ruin a good story with the facts ?
If you want to see a sad sight go to Glenbuck now - There's only one house left and that's a shed.
Shanks was "down the mines" for a week at the most before he realised it was a waste of time. The man was a leader all his life and he knew it (he never actually played for The Cherrypickers). Bob Paisley could never have done what he did without the foundations that Shanks laid and Fagin never wanted the job in the first place.
King Kenny (The best all season player I've ever seen, including Best, Pele etc etc) won the double because he was PLAYER/Manager, we'd never have won either title without him coming off the bench.
We've been lucky in the 50s when Shanks came and he was strong enough to stamp his personality on the club despite having a crew of dyckheads on the board. He forged a bond between the players/management/supporters that no other team had, but all wanted to copy. His influence slowly diminished over the years and that's where we started to go wrong.
It's a vastly different world now and I don't know if Shanks could do it today but there are similarities with Raffa in that we now have a manager who knows his players inside out, good bits and bad bits, a manager who reacts to his supporters in the right way and is The Boss to the team, not a mate.
Well on his way to being a Liverpool legend.
There is no one there today within two or three years of becoming a legend, Jamie Carra is the closest but a 60s equal would be Ian Callaghan or Chris Lawler and who calls them legends ?.
JohnBull