Chronicling Bill Shankly’s Transformative First Season as Liverpool Manager

- - Managers
Bill Shankly Statue at Anfield

Image by Isriya Paireepairit on flickr

In the early 1960s, Liverpool was on fire.

The Beatles were established as the most popular band on the planet, the Mersey Beat sound was being exported to all corners of the globe and regeneration projects were bringing classic – and some unique – architecture to the city.

Meanwhile, the lifeblood of Liverpool – its two football clubs, but principally the Reds – were reaching new heights, with Liverpool FC clinching the First Division title for the first time since the 1940s.

But in the late 1950s, things were rather different. It was still a couple of years until Brian Epstein would discover John, Paul, George and Ringo, while Liverpool FC had spent years in the relative doldrums of the Second Division.

And it’s the 1959/60 season – the first with Bill Shankly at the helm – that is the subject of a drama from A24 Studios, the production firm responsible for Oscar winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once. They have tasked award-winning scriptwriter Jack Thorne to pen the action, while Box to Box, the creators of the F1 documentary series Drive to Survive, are also on board.

And here’s the sort of thing that viewers can expect…

A State of Disrepair

Weathered Red Brick Wall

Today, we know Anfield to be a colossal 61,000 amphitheatre, with the Kop amongst the most iconic sections of supporters in world football.

But it was in poor condition in 1959, to the point there was no way to water the threadbare playing surface. It was not befitting a club with ambitions of being one of the best in the world.

And Melwood, which would become a state-of-the-art training facility, was akin to a provincial park, with overgrown pitches and a dilapidated pavilion. One of the training pitches had two giant craters in it, which led Shankly to comment, ‘the Germans have been over, have they?’ when he first laid eyes on it.

After convincing the club’s owners to invest in Melwood, the facility became a fitting place for Shankly’s players to learn of their new manager’s fluid pass-and-move preference. It was here that the boss got his first glimpse of his new players… and, in truth, he wasn’t impressed with what he saw. “After only one match, I knew that the team as a whole was not good enough,” was his rather damning verdict.

Talk about making your mark: Shankly immediately put 24 players on the transfer list, bringing in replacements from the youth team and working hard to improve their game with an intense training regimen, which included fitness and conditioning work, technical coaching and five-a-side games ‘played at 100mph’.

It was only when trying to convince the board to sign new players that Shankly felt he had bitten off more than he could chew by leaving Huddersfield Town. Liverpool finished third in the Second Division in both of his first two seasons in charge; back then, only the top two got promoted. They needed reinforcements to take the next step.

Eventually the purse-strings were slackened enough to pay for man mountain Ron Yeats and prolific marksman Ian St John, with both men signed for relative peanuts from Dundee United and Motherwell.

With Gerry Byrne and Roger Hunt coming through the youth ranks, suddenly Shankly had more quality at his disposal. Liverpool would win the Second Division title in 1961/62, with Hunt scoring a staggering 41 goals.

The Boot Room

As he begged, stole and borrowed to deliver improvements in Liverpool’s footballing infrastructure, while working hard to enhance the talents of the players at his disposal, Shankly was also aware that his backroom staff would play a big part in any success that the club would have.

And so he instigated the famous Boot Room, which is a legendary part of Liverpool FC folklore now but back then, it was a unique proposition.

The Boot Room was, quite literally, a room within the Anfield complex, but it was so much more than that. It became a sacrosanct space; an area where tactics were devised, where problems were shared and where inner turmoil was voiced.

Originally instigated by the new manager on his arrival at the club in 1959, the Boot Room would become part and parcel of Liverpool FC for decades to come. But in those early days, it was Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and others that masterminded the climb back from the second tier and on to First Division and continental glory.

Once again, it was Shankly that instituted a change that would help to bring decades of success to the club in those dark days of the late 1950s.

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