Liverpool FC Forum

by **greenred** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 3:45 pm

The Sunday Times - Football

The Sunday Times October 09, 2005

Shankly: the hero who let me down
One was a true great of British football as Liverpool manager, the other a tenacious striker who helped to turn Anfield’s dreams into reality. But, in this exclusive extract from his frank new autobiography, Ian St John reveals that the ruthless side to Bill Shankly was to sour their relationship for ever

When Liverpool beat Everton 5-0 on the way to our second league title under Bill Shankly in 1966, we played so well that it seemed we could do anything. We were not so much a football club as an empire, and I lived at the heart of it, the man who scored the goal that won Liverpool their first FA Cup.
Shankly likened me to one of the best middleweights, quick and hard, and for an old fighting man that was another reason to believe in a future without bounds. In all of that, I never imagined the situation that unfolded in the pre-match lobby at Newcastle United in the autumn of 1969. Well, maybe that’s not quite true. I always knew I would have to play out the scene one day, because it is one that no player can avoid for ever, but I assumed the circumstances would be rather different.

I didn’t expect such a gut-wrenching surprise, an ambush that came without a hint of warning.

I had just performed one of the rituals of match day. I had gone out front to pass on some tickets promised to friends and exchanged a few pleasantries, all the time my mind ticking down to the forthcoming action. In the lobby, the great legend of the northeast, Jackie Milburn, who had become a football writer, was handed copies of the teamsheets by a club official, and we amiably shared the latest gossip.

As Milburn ran his eyes down the teams, I said I had to get back to the dressing room to change. Then he looked up sharply and said a few words that might have been, for the impact they had, imprinted on my brain with a branding iron: “Bonnie lad, you’re not playing.”

Bill Shankly had dropped me without saying a word, without even meeting my eyes. Of course, like death and taxes, it was inevitable, but I thought it was reasonable to believe the day would not come unannounced, like a thief in the night to rob me of a confident expectation that, suddenly, I realised how much I had always cherished. As I hurried down the corridors of St James’ Park, I thought of the great relationship I had had with Shankly, all the warmth and the intimacies, the endless laughter and the deep sense that beneath all the passing pressures of the game, and sometimes the terrible tension and cruelties it produced, we had a deep understanding. If it wasn’t father-and-son understanding, it was something very close indeed — or so I had thought.

I FIRST met Shankly in 1961 when he swept into Fir Park, the home of Motherwell, my first club, like a one-man boarding party in a Rolls-Royce he had borrowed from a Liverpool director. He was a sharp dresser — he told me his father was a tailor and he got his ties, which invariably had the colour red as a significant element, from Germany — and was filled with a quite amazing urgency.

When he came to our flat, my wife, Betsy, like me, was a little overwhelmed, especially when he said we had to go straight down to Liverpool. She said: “Mr Shankly, you know we have a baby . . .” He brushed aside the problem. “Take the baby to your mother’s,” he ordered. “We have important business here.”

I could confirm a thousand times the Shankly caricature. I was around, for example, one day when he took a bemused reporter into a toilet cubicle in the new dressing room at Anfield, pulled the chain and said: “You know it refills in 15 seconds . . . it’s a world record.” Once, when Italian opponents came to town, he urged them down to the training ground and claimed: “It’s the greenest grass you’ll ever see.”

When we played Internazionale in an epic European Cup semi-final in 1965, we stayed at a beautiful hotel on the shore of Lake Como before the second leg. Concerned by the noise of the local church bells calling the faithful to mass, he had a sharp word with his long-suffering assistant, Bob Paisley.

“Bob, you’d better get those bells stopped, they’re going to interfere with the boys’ sleep.”

“Bill,” Paisley replied, shaking his head slowly, “those bells have been ringing for centuries. Do you think they’re going to stop them for a bunch of footballers from the other side of Europe?” That was precisely what Shankly thought, and when he was finally persuaded that an official request was out of the question, he was not daunted. “Well, you’d better do something about it,” he insisted. “You’d better climb up that tower and muffle the bells. I’m depending on you.”

Paisley continued to mutter and shake his head, but he did go to the church and ask the priest if maybe some tape could be applied to the bells to muffle the sound. Needless to say, they continued to sound.

Shankly had great attention to detail. Before another European game, against Anderlecht, he came up with the idea of wearing red shorts to match our red shirts. He thought the colour scheme would carry psychological impact — red for danger, red for power. He came into the dressing room one day and threw a pair of red shorts to Ronnie Yeats. “Get into those shorts and let’s see how you look,” he said. “Christ, Ronnie, you look awesome, terrifying. You look 7ft tall.”

“Why not go the whole hog, boss?” I suggested. “Why not wear red socks? Let’s go out all in red.” Shankly approved and an iconic kit was born.

Shankly loved cards, having played back home in Ayrshire with the miners, and when he was a player at Preston and Carlisle. He also played with us. I recall a long card game on a trip to Newcastle. Shankly was involved in the school and so was Bobby Graham, a nervous man who must have been relieved to know that his presence, on this occasion at least, was absolutely official. It was a tough school, with Yeats, Tommy Smith and Tommy Lawrence also participating, and it was fascinating to watch Shanks play. He squeezed the cards in the way that the miners did. He just took a quick glance and then clenched them in his hand so that it was impossible to see what he had, even when you were standing behind him.

On this occasion Graham cleaned up at three-card brag when his three threes beat Shankly’s three queens. Much to the manager’s embarrassment, he had run out of money. “See me back at Anfield,” he said to Bobby as he got up from the school. On the next Monday, Bobby wasn’t sure about claiming his winnings. Naturally, we all argued that he deserved his money and urged him to march into Shankly’s office to ask him for it. We went with him.
“Boss, I’ve come for the grabs . . .” Bobby began. “Oh aye, son,” said Shanks, handing him the winnings. As Bobby was leaving his office, Shankly added: “Bobby, son, stay away from the cards. No good can come from them.”

So much of Shankly’s behaviour was bizarre, and so many football men over the years had the urge to shake their heads questioningly, that the temptation was to believe he was as much a clown as a messiah. The idea was utterly wrong-headed. Shankly always knew what he was doing and what he was saying. His language could be extravagant and comic, but it never lacked a hard purpose.

Nowadays it is often painful to watch a game when you imagine you are seeing it through his eyes. You have to suppress the urge to try to get hold of the manager or coach and ask: “Have you looked at the film yet? Have you grasped how many times you lost possession in the most unprofessional way?” Before a game, Shankly always conveyed one thought and feeling above all others — his yearning for the days when he had the thrill of going out to play. He envied us our ability to do this in the prime of our lives, and he was able to pass on the value of this in the most powerful way. On one cold afternoon at Old Trafford, Shankly’s friend Sir Matt Busby invited him up to his office when we arrived at the stadium. The boss never drank, generally settling for tea or tomato juice, but we suspected Busby had slipped a serious shot of Scotch into his cup of tea. No doubt the idea was simply to warm him up on such a biting day, but the effect was extraordinary. Shankly came bouncing into our dressing room and delivered an amazing speech on how lucky we were to be at this great ground preparing to play a legendary team.

“Boys,” he roared, “I can’t tell you what I would give to play today. This is our life . . . this is what we were born to do, it is the best we do.”

Without the fuel of Busby’s whisky, Shankly was not quite so emotional at Wembley for the FA Cup final against Leeds in 1965, but the message was as clearly expressed as ever: “Enjoy yourselves out there, boys, do your work, be professional, do all your running and tackling, but don’t forget to enjoy every minute of it, and that way you will always remember what happens today. It will always be one of your best memories. This is a great day in our lives.”

I never had a serious doubt about the outcome of that final all through the first, goalless 90 minutes. A goal in extra time seemed inevitable. Roger Hunt stooped to head in after Gerry Byrne got to the byline and crossed, and we had the lead.

After our goal we fell victim to a common phenomenon when one team forges ahead in such a closely fought game — we fell back a little. You never feel one goal is enough, and that brings anxieties that are hard to repel. The pressure swings to the team defending the slender lead, and so it was with us. Billy Bremner banged in a brilliant goal and for the first time, I had doubts about the result.

Suddenly the spectre of the immovable Liver Birds hung over us. The curse, which suggested that the statues would have to fly off the Mersey before Liverpool won the cup, was back.

This was so, right up to the sweetest moment of my football life. Willie Stevenson worked Ian Callaghan away on the right and Ian timed his cross perfectly. For some reason, Gary Sprake, the Leeds goalkeeper, came off his line to get the ball, and I went past him to meet it. The Leeds line was guarded by their right-back, Paul Reaney, but the net seemed huge to me and I headed the ball with a heavy bump. It flew home. We were back in the lead with nine minutes to go. If you haven’t found God in your life, you find him at times like that. You hear yourself praying, “Please God, give me this.” I had never had such an attack of instant religion and it seemed that the game, and my conversion, would last for ever. As the ball bounced dangerously in our box, Yeats stretched out his left leg in telescopic fashion and lashed the ball to safety. Then it was over, gloriously, beautifully. The referee blew the whistle and finally the Liver Birds had flown out of our lives.

THE worst feeling I had in football arose from the European Cup semi-final against Inter in 1965. We took a 3-1 lead to Italy but it wasn’t the bell- ringers of Lago di Como who ruined our chances, or the combined brilliance of the Spaniard Luis Suarez and the Italians Sandro Mazzola and Mario Corso. It was the referee, who, I will always believe, was a cheat — a Spaniard named Ortiz de Mendibil. He was so partial to the Italians that early in the game I turned to Roger Hunt and said: “We’ll be lucky if this bloody referee gives us a throw-in.”

Shankly later swore that he had seen an Inter official hand an envelope to the referee. Among various rumours going around, one was that the Spanish official had a sick child and had been offered medical assistance by Inter. Whatever the truth of such speculation, we would always believe we were cheated out of the game. Corso struck Inter’s first goal direct from a free kick, but although we protested that de Mendibil had signalled an indirect kick, the official waved us away. The second goal was even more controversial. Joaquin Peiro kicked the ball away from Tommy Lawrence as he bounced it in the goal area — which in Europe at that time was an automatic free kick for the defending team — and then ran it into the net.

That was the truly sickening blow. It pulled Inter level on goals and meant that, with their away goal, they had only to play out time to go through to the final against Benfica.

To us, the evidence seemed overwhelming. We were not to be allowed to get a result, and it was almost a case of simply shrugging near the end when Inter produced their one piece of authentic brilliance, a wonderful piece of interplay and a fine strike by Giacinto Facchetti. It was the worst night I had ever known in football, and once again a lot of regret was centred on the disappointment of Shankly. The boss never got over what happened at San Siro, not really. It fuelled his distrust of foreigners on a football field. He believed that it was natural for them to cheat, something quite separate from his own culture, which was hard to the point of ruthlessness but purged of cheap trickery.

It was not hard to understand his distaste for some of the routine antics of European opposition, the diving, the spitting, the feigning of injury. Heaven knows how he would have reacted to some of the behaviour on show in today’s Premiership. The blatant dives indulged in by some of the most honoured players of today, stars such as Robert Pires of Arsenal and Ruud van Nistelrooy of Manchester United, would have filled him with scorn. He would also have been appalled that homegrown players had so quickly adopted the cheating tendency. “Aye,” said Shankly, “we may be hard, we may whack people from time to time, but we don’t do sneaky things.”

What happened in Milan was one of the heaviest blows he ever suffered. Had we got by Inter, we believed we had every chance of beating Benfica, the team of Eusebio, Torres and Simoes. They were a talented side but had weaknesses the boss believed we could exploit.

For Shankly, it would have been the coup of his footballing life. He would have beaten Jock Stein, the man he hero- worshipped, to the great peak of the European game by two years, Busby by three. When you thought of his impact at Anfield and the speed with which he had turned us into a team that could compete properly with any force in football, who could say that it was a distinction he didn’t deserve?

DESPITE all the triumphs we shared and the good memories, to this day I cannot shake the belief that, at the end, Shankly let me down. I was terribly disappointed that he didn’t handle it better. He should have taken me to one side, even in the hotel in Newcastle on the eve of the match. He could have said any of a hundred things. Anything would have been better than the blow administered by Jackie Milburn. Neither Shankly nor I could change the realities of football, or the ageing process, but he could have shown a little courtesy. Shankly could have said — and how could I have denied it? — that the greatest teams have to change and every player has his time. He could have said I had been part of a great team, but the time had come when I had to think of my future, just as he had to move on with a new challenge and new players.

When I got to the dressing room at St James’, my boots had been placed beneath the No 12’s peg. Shankly was nowhere to be seen and I presumed he was lying low. I ranted and raved. Paisley and Reuben Bennett, another member of the famous Anfield Boot Room, were trying to calm me down, but it was futile. I got changed and went to the dug-out in the sourest mood that had ever possessed me at a ground. I sat on the bench, head down, and shrugged away Bob when he told me to “ have a little warm-up”.

“I’m not warming up unless he comes down to tell me to,” I snapped. Shankly stayed in the stands. We were both being stubborn. We lost the game. I rode the team bus home wordlessly. On the Monday morning I went to Shankly’s office. “Why didn’t you tell me I wasn’t playing?” I asked. “After all these years, didn’t you think I deserved something better than hearing it on the steps of another ground?” He said I should have been in the dressing room when he made his team announcement. I said that wasn’t the point. He had all Friday night to tell me, all the time up to the game. I told him it was the first time I had ever been left out of a team, and it was very hard that it happened that way. He wasn’t sympathetic. The conversation slipped into a full-blown row.

Nothing was worse than what happened after the warm-up before the first training session I had as a former member of the first team. I was told to join the reserves. More than anything it was embarrassing. I had the terrible feeling I had come to the end of the road. All that I had achieved had come full circle and I was on the outside of the charmed circle. The greatest moments of the past roared through my head, but now I knew that all of them had irrevocably gone, even if I returned, briefly, to the glory of the first team. Something had snapped. I just wanted to hide. I didn’t want to look at the kids, those hopeful kids, because I might just imagine I saw pity on their faces.

© 2005 Ian St John

by **greenred** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 3:47 pm

The Sunday Times October 09, 2005

When Houllier was sacked it was a day of liberation for the club
The Frenchman almost destroyed my beloved football club, offloaded his only decent signing and then turned on those who dared to question his methods

THE LOWEST point in my relationship with Liverpool undoubtedly came in the days of Gerard Houllier. I was disgusted at what he did to Anfield over his years in charge; how he squeezed away so much of its life and its meaning and how, ultimately, he missed the whole point of it.
One of my initial reservations about Houllier was that in his joint management with Roy Evans, he took a job that wasn’t feasible — and, I believe, on the understanding that when it became obvious to everyone that it wouldn’t work, he would stay and Evans would go. I come from a background where you don’t take another man’s job and it’s never a case of first in, first out.

To my mind, Houllier had only one honourable option when he was offered the job on the original terms, and that was to say: “No, this is not possible — you sort it out, create a genuine vacancy, and then I will consider the possibilities.”

When the experiment failed, there was only one position to take as a critic: both Evans and Houllier had to go. The Frenchman rode through the situation, however, and quickly identified me as his leading accuser among the old Liverpool players. He ridiculed my managerial record without knowing any of the background. He talked about my stint at Portsmouth as though the two challenges, his at Anfield, mine at Portsmouth, could be reasonably compared. He spent about £120m; I spent £ 5,000.

None of this would have mattered to me if I’d seen any value in Houllier’s work, or any progress in the team. Instead, I saw them slipping away from the old Liverpool principles of balanced, attacking football built on a sound defence, a real integration of the two basic elements of any team.

Houllier bought time — a lot of time — with three trophies in 2000-1, but I wasn’t convinced by that surge of success, and I don’t think that any serious judge of the game could have been. He left Michael Owen, the most effective striker in the country, out of the League Cup final against Birmingham City, a team from a lower league but a better team on the day — and won on penalties. A few months later, Owen won the FA Cup for Liverpool with a couple of flashes of scoring brilliance, after Arsenal had utterly dominated the game. The Uefa Cup win over the Spanish team Alaves was exciting, but it represented a travesty of defence at that level of the game.

The first player Houllier signed was Jean-Michel Ferri, a young French player of such mediocrity that he played a few games and then disappeared. I was told that his chief value to the manager was the eyes and ears he provided in the dressing room. As I said at the time, it might have been cheaper to hire the services of the Pinkerton detective agency.

Soon Houllier was pronouncing the need to destroy the Spice Boys image, and then asked the Liverpool public a question that was deeply insulting to all those who had helped lay down the Liverpool tradition. He said: “Do you want to go back to the drink culture of the 1960s?” Did they want to go back to the roaring passion — and the roaring football — of Bill Shankly? If they had such an option, you had to believe they might just have taken it.

Houllier’s strategy of tightening up the defence would have been a laudable ambition if it had been coupled with genuine development of the team’s play — but it wasn’t. He tightened defence at a terrible cost, turning Liverpool’s midfield into a wasteland. He took away all the traditional craft. Owen and Robbie Fowler, two great striking talents, were obliged to live on scraps.

There is no easier task in football than tightening the defence at the cost of all other aspects of the team. You get bodies behind the ball. You play in a tight band across the middle of the field. You don’t have shape or rhythm. You don’t break out of defence, building quickly to strike at the heart of the opposition.

Liverpool always had width and penetration. Suddenly it was gone. The one great chance of sustained creativity, provided by one of the best players in Europe, ended when Houllier decided to sell Jari Litmanen. Houllier was apparently upset when he heard that the Finnish star, who amazingly couldn’t command a first-team place, had been trying to bring a little sophistication to the game of Emile Heskey.

As an example of waste, the treatment of Litmanen was rivalled only by that meted out to Fowler. Undoubtedly, Fowler had a bit of Liverpool scally in him, but some encouragement from Houllier, an occasional arm around the shoulder, would almost certainly have done much to bring out more of the boy’s superb natural talent.

I was standing in the foyer at Anfield one day before a match when Fowler was handing tickets to friends. Houllier came to the entrance of the corridor leading down to the dressing rooms and bellowed: “Robbie . . . Robbie . . . it’s two o’clock,” then marched off, every inch the schoolmaster he once was. Fowler no doubt felt like a schoolboy who had just been ticked off. He walked off to the dressing room, head down and not looking anyone in the eye.

What Fowler needed was Houllier, or his assistant manager, Phil Thompson, a former captain of the club, to take hold of the player and say: “Look, son, you have enormous talent, you have a great future. Maybe you’re running with the wrong crowd. Maybe you have to take a bit more time over your game.” They could have done it so as not to drive the boy into a corner.

Michael Owen, who threatened to break every scoring record at Anfield, is another story of Houllier waste. As the Houllier years wore on, Owen’s chances were becoming fewer and fewer simply because of the decline in the team’s approach play. As he proved at Real Madrid with limited opportunities, Owen will always score, although it is also true that a serious hamstring injury did take away a vital edge.

Houllier stockpiled mediocrity. He paid £11m for Emile Heskey, who was never worth that kind of money. It was amusing, in a sour sort of way, when, after a brief outburst of scoring from the big lad, Houllier revealed that he had been giving him special coaching. When the goals dried up again, I had to wonder what had happened to the special coaching.

The stream of poor signings was relentless. El-Hadji Diouf looked good in the World Cup of 2002, but how much time did Houllier spend in assessing his character and the place that he would occupy in the team? However long he spent on that, it was a disaster. Erik Meijer played a few games and disappeared. Vladimir Smicer? He flies so high in the tackle, he could have been a high-jump champion. Bernard Diomede? That Frenchman played two league games for Liverpool in three seasons. Titi Camara was said to be a star signing, but he disappeared after a few rave reports.

Eventually, with the team 30 points adrift of the leaders of the Premiership at the end of the 2003-4 season, Liverpool found the nerve to fire Houllier.

It was the day of liberation for the football tradition of my old club.

by **Ola Mr Benitez** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:54 am

This looks like a great book!!! Ian St John is one of the original Liverpool Superstars

by **Sabre** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 12:14 pm

Is it just me, or St John overreacted because not playing that game?

Besides Shankly's answer was good enough, for starters he should have been on the dressing room when the list was announced. I just think he thought he was too important and Shankly put him in his place.

I loved to read that text. I wonder if nowadays players care about playing and have that will power. I doubt it.

Sabre

by **Lando_Griffin** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 2:43 pm

I agree with him about Houllier. I agree with Sabre about the Newcastle game. He should have been in the dressing room.

by **josip84** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 2:45 pm

Very interesting extracts.
St John proves a relentless prosecutor in Houllier's trial. Maybe too hard a prosecutor though : whatever he may say, the various Cups won by the Reds in 2001 owe a lot to Houllier.

by **Paul C** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 3:01 pm

It was funny looking back at the amount of stick Saint, Tommy Smith, etc. used to give to Houllier but I do feel sorry for the guy

Agreed with Sabre about the dressing room thing.

by **NiftyNeil** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:12 pm

Personally, I can't stand the guy for his constant criticism of Houllier. From the very beginning, he had it in for GH due to IStJ's friendship with Roy Evans. I remember when he used to be gutted on Radio City when we had won a game. He even has the audacity to discredit our treble win.
GH may be a lot of things, but that treble winning season was incredible, and the following season, we finished higher than any other in the last 14 years. IStJ was the main ringleader in Houllier bashing, you could barley shut him up in GH's last two seasons - he was loving every minute of it. What a :censored:

!!

by **NiftyNeil** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:35 pm

greenred wrote:The Sunday Times October 09, 2005

When Houllier was sacked it was a day of liberation for the club
The Frenchman almost destroyed my beloved football club, offloaded his only decent signing and then turned on those who dared to question his methods

THE LOWEST point in my relationship with Liverpool undoubtedly came in the days of Gerard Houllier. I was disgusted at what he did to Anfield over his years in charge; how he squeezed away so much of its life and its meaning and how, ultimately, he missed the whole point of it.

He talked about my stint at Portsmouth as though the two challenges, his at Anfield, mine at Portsmouth, could be reasonably compared. He spent about £120m; I spent £ 5,000.

Houllier bought time — a lot of time — with three trophies in 2000-1, but I wasn’t convinced by that surge of success, and I don’t think that any serious judge of the game could have been. He left Michael Owen, the most effective striker in the country, out of the League Cup final against Birmingham City, a team from a lower league but a better team on the day — and won on penalties. A few months later, Owen won the FA Cup for Liverpool with a couple of flashes of scoring brilliance, after Arsenal had utterly dominated the game. The Uefa Cup win over the Spanish team Alaves was exciting, but it represented a travesty of defence at that level.

I was standing in the foyer at Anfield one day before a match when Fowler was handing tickets to friends. Houllier came to the entrance of the corridor leading down to the dressing rooms and bellowed: “Robbie . . . Robbie . . . it’s two o’clock,” then marched off, every inch the schoolmaster he once was. Fowler no doubt felt like a schoolboy who had just been ticked off. He walked off to the dressing room, head down and not looking anyone in the eye.

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to rip this tit apart.

Point one: Who was his only decent signing that he offloaded?
Jari? Ziege? Babbel? Titi? - who knows, but what about Hamman, Hyypia, Riise. What about the players who didn't get a sniff under Evans - like Carra, Murphy, Berger (who was about to leave)

Point two: How did he squeeze the life out of Liverpool? Surely it was the other way round. GH loved Liverpool too much IMO, and he was blinded by it.

Point three: How can you compare the spendings of a lower league team in the 70's to the spendings of a top premiership team in the 21st century.

Point 4: Regarding the treble season, the points he has made sound just like the mancs were saying at the time (is he Lawro in disguise). That season we had five players scoring 10 goals or more (and a few others Smicer/Barmby/McAllister not far behind), over 120 in total and the best defence in the league. He slags of our defence in the final, we had already kept clean sheets at the Nou Camp, Rome + Porto.

Point 5: What the hell is up with a manager hurrying up a player 1 hour before kick off?? I would expect every manager worth his salt to do that. "Robbie its 2 o'clock" hardly a public earbashing.

Ian St John is a :censored:

, end of (I can't believe toss'er is censored)

by **teamleader1** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:59 pm

SOUR GRAPES OVER SHANKS

SPOT ON OVER HOULIER

LOOKS LIKE A GOOD READ THOUGH

IMHO

by **JBG** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 9:25 pm

I think St. John went a bit far with his criticism of Houllier. Much of it was justified, but there seemed to be a personal animosity to it. Graeme Souness did far more damage to the club than Houllier ever did, something which seems to have been brushed under the carpet. Roy Evans' complete inability to keep his players' feet on the ground also set the club back years.

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Shankly,the hero who let me down - Extract from ian st john book

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