Shankly is best remembered for his management of Liverpool and is widely regarded as one of football’s most successful and respected managers. He took charge of Liverpool when they were in the Second Division Championship and rebuilt the team into a major force in English football. He led Liverpool to the Second Division Championship to gain promotion to the top-flight Football League First Division in 1962, before going on to win three First Division Championship, two FA cups, four Charity Shields and one Uefa Cup. Shankly announced his surprise retirement from football a few weeks after Liverpool won the 1974 F.A Cup final, having managed the club for fifteen years, and was succeeded by his long-time assistant Bob Paisley. He died seven years later at the age of 68.
Now the funniest, controversial and amazing Quotes of Bill Shankly :
- ‘Liverpool was made for me and I was made for Liverpool.’
- ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’
- ‘The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they don’t know the game.’
- Bill Shankly to Tommy Smith after he’d turned up for training with a bandaged knee – ‘Take that poof bandage off, and what do you mean YOUR knee, it’s LIVERPOOL’S knee!’
- Bill Shankly on the Liverpool fans – ‘I’m just one of the people who stands on the kop. They think the same as I do, and I think the same as they do. It’s a kind of marriage of people who like each other.’
- “If you can’t support us when we draw or lose, don’t support us when we win”
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- ‘Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple.”
- ‘If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.’
- ‘Son, you’ll do well here as long as you remember two things. Don’t over-eat and don’t lose your accent.’ – to Ian St John when he signed for Liverpool.
- Talking to a reporter about Roger Hunt – ‘Yes Roger Hunt misses a few, but he gets in the right place to miss them.’
- To the players after failing to sign Lou Macari – ‘I only wanted him for the reserves anyway.’
- ‘I know this is a sad occasion, but I think that Dixie would be amazed to know that even in death he could draw a bigger crowd to Goodison than Everton on a Saturday afternoon.’ – speaking at the funeral of Everton legend Dixie Dean
- ‘If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I’d pull the curtains.’
- To Alan Ball after he’d signed for Everton – ‘Never mind Alan, at least you’ll be able to play next to a great team.’
- 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.’
- ‘It was the most difficult thing in the world, when I went to tell the chairman. It was like walking to the electric chair. That’s the way it felt.’ On leaving Liverpool in 1974