Scouse hero Shankly an icon for every football fan

SO, sadly, I was right to highlight Saturday’s fixture as the most likely falling fence in our otherwise gentle pre-January canter.

And Milner, as I suggested he might, proved to be class act — the best midfielder on the pitch, which isn’t bad for a lad being placed out of position. I trust we have made up for the slip last night against Wolves, and will continue to do so at a run-of-the-mill Fulham at the weekend.

Though I must admit the actual football wasn’t the highest item on my agenda this past weekend, in light of the sensational story breaking about a potential Chinese takeover bid, of which more next week.

So, having read the ‘Takeway’ menu, and then having wearily digested Fergie’s tiresome eternal rant about time-keeping, I was heartened to see the 50th anniversary of Bill Shankly’s accession being celebrated.

Here it behoves me to digress from the usual OT beat. In fact, this isn’t hard for me to do: he’s one of my favourite managers of all-time. There, I said it: stone me if you must. (And before you do, may I remind you that, when asked in 1959 what was the greatest club in Britain, Bill unhesitatingly replied ‘United’!)

Moreover, you have got to say one thing for his Liverpool sides — they were infinitely preferable to the hard-faced Sounessesque and McMahonian variants that would follow his demise. United v Liverpool in the 60s and 70s were hard games, no mistake: but bosom buddies Matt Busby and Bill were always able to drink and laugh afterwards, sometimes going on out with the wives to talk about the old days in Scottish coalfields.

There were no outrages: it was not war. Compare and contrast to United v Leeds, and Leeds v Liverpool, in the 60s and 70s: simply cases of good versus evil.

Shankly and Busby both knew the name of the devil — Revie be thy name — and Shanks especially wasn’t shy about saying so.

Nevertheless, Leeds and Liverpool did actually share an elemental philosophical starting point in the 60s, which was more or less opposed to the one we shared with Blanchflower’s Tottenham. It is no accident that the two most famous statements of belief by Messrs Shankly and Bremner were virtually identical, best summed up by Bremner in his book title “you get nowt for coming second”.

Shankly said not coming first meant coming “nowhere”. In short, both defined success and meaning by silverware.

Now the reason Shanks deserves to be credited for his morality is that, despite that “winning is everything” mentality, that never meant he would stoop to anything to do so. Shankly’s Liverpool were not cheats. Quite the opposite: Bill hated cheats, angrily said so often, and demonstrated it in his everyday actions. His Liverpool weren’t even dirty, although they were certainly bloody hard and apt to have a punch-up. (But then, so were we.)

In such times, Liverpool and Shanks could appear almost saintly by comparison to the likes of Leeds, despite the fact that they, too, were primarily built to be a hardened Machine For Winning.

They were opponents you could genuinely respect, and Bill was a manager you could truly admire.

So: excuse the digression. But we should all tip a hat to Bill’s memory this week. And regret that there are seemingly no more like him in the game today.