Bob Paisley's era at Liverpool

Our managerial lineage is unique.

Pep Quardiola  is the closest man to achieve what Sir Bob did in europe and in thier respective leauges.

Bob Paisley

Date of Birth
23 Jan 1919
Birthplace
Hetton-le-Hole
Nationality
English
Games
535
Games Won
308
Games Drawn
131
Games Lost
96
Staff HonoursFirst Division champions 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983

League Cup 1981, 1982, 1983

European Cup 1977, 1978, 1981

UEFA Cup 1976

European Super Cup 1977

FA Charity Shield 1974, 1976, 1977 (shared), 1979, 1980, 1982


Profile
Twenty trophies in nine seasons - not bad for a man who was loathe to make the step into football management.

But then, that was the reluctant genius that was Bob Paisley.

The humble son of the North East always was more at ease in the wings than on centre stage but when it came to knowledge of the game and the ability to spot a player, his record spoke volumes.

Born the son of a miner in the County Durham village of Hetton-le-Hole on January 23, 1919, Paisley's childhood was spent absorbing knowledge and advice.

As his late widow Jessie recalled: "Bob always tried to remember what his headmaster told him; that if you speak softly people will try to listen to what you're saying. If you shout they're liable to walk away and not take it in."

Such homespun psychology would serve Paisley invaluably during his management years when Europe bowed to the stocky figure in a flat cap that belied a masterful football brain.

Following in the footsteps of the great Bill Shankly was a task many believed was akin to mission impossible and yet Paisley's transition from bootroom coach to boss was almost seamless.

It all came about in July 1974 when Shanks rocked the football world by announcing his retirement from the game.

Who would be brave enough to take on a role in which the shadow of the great Scot would loom large? For the Liverpool board there was only one name on their short-list.

Bob had flanked Shankly's shoulder from the day he had arrived at Anfield back in 1959, after the great man had swapped the Pennines of Huddersfield for the banks of the Mersey.

He was a pioneer of the 'Liverpool way', the brand of football that was pivotal to Shankly's football ethos. He also had a relationship with the club that stretched back even further than his predecessor's, one that began two decades earlier when he had arrived at Anfield as a 20-year-old left-half on May 8, 1939 for a £10 signing-on fee and weekly wage of £5.

Wartime service in Egypt and the western desert delayed Paisley's league debut as a Liverpool player until 1946-47.  It was during this campaign that he won the first of 10 championship medals in his various Anfield roles, in a team that included Scotland and Great Britain star Billy Liddell and centre forward Albert Stubbins.

Despite being ready to leave the club after being dropped by the directors who picked the team for the 1950 FA Cup Final, he played on and went on to captain the side before hanging up his boots following Liverpool's relegation in 1954.

However, it would not be the end of his love affair with the Reds.

He went on to establish a role as a reserve team trainer and also became a renowned, self-taught, physiotherapist.

He was the perfect foil for Shanks, a football lover with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, but one that was happy to leave the limelight to the man with a flair for public speaking.

And so, when it came to finding a successor to Shankly, Liverpool only had one man in mind…

The only trouble was that Paisley was reluctant to step into the spotlight.

It needed much persuasion from the club and his family to convince the 55-year-old to take on the challenge awaiting him, but how important his positive response would become to the future success of Liverpool Football Club.

After much soul searching he agreed, saying: "It's like being given the Queen Elizabeth to steer in a force 10 gale."

Maybe so, but what a magnificent navigator he would prove to be.

In his first season he led the Reds to the runners-up spot in the Championship, an achievement he was disappointed by, remarking at the time, "I was like an apprentice that ran wide at the bends."

That may seem somewhat harsh, but he made amends for what he saw as failure the following year, leading the club to a league and UEFA Cup double.

The title was secured with a famous 3-1 win at Wolves on the final day of the season while a 4-3 aggregate success of Belgian outfit Bruges clinched European glory.

It was a season that would have proved difficult to surpass for most sides and yet the following campaign, Paisley's Liverpool would do just that.

Having retained the league title with consummate ease, it could so easily have been an all-conquering year for Liverpool had they seen off Manchester United in the FA Cup final.

However, luck was with the Red Devils as they ran out fortunate 2-1 winners - not the best preparation for Liverpool's first ever European Cup final.

Lesser teams would have suffered a crisis of confidence, but not the Reds, who shrugged off their Wembley disappointment to go on and conquer Europe for the very first time just four days later.

The Eternal City was the setting for what Paisley would later refer to as his "perfect day" with Liverpool going on to claim a 3-1 victory over a strong Borussia Moenchengladbach side.

The victory installed Paisley as the first English-born manager to lift Europe's greatest prize following the success of Scottish duo Jock Stein (Celtic) and Sir Matt Busby (Manchester United).

As the celebratory champagne flowed, Paisley, who was later honoured with an OBE, sat quietly in a corner of the team hotel.

"I'm not having a drink because I want to savour every moment," he said. "The Pope and I are two of the few sober people in Rome tonight!"

The Roman carnival also heralded the end of Kevin Keegan's fine Anfield career and many felt it would prove to be the end of an era for the Reds.

But they reckoned without Paisley's unique eye for talent.

The taciturn genius swooped to sign Celtic hero Kenny Dalglish for less than the income from Keegan's transfer.

It was an inspirational move that would see Dalglish go on to surpass the achievements of Keegan and secure his place as the undisputed King of the Kop.

"There's never been a better bit of business than that," beamed Liverpool Chairman John Smith.

Few would argue with such a statement, although Paisley's supreme ability in the transfer market was nothing new to Reds fans.

He had already captured the likes of Phil Neal, Terry McDermott, Joey Jones and David Johnson, while his decision to switch Ray Kennedy from a powerful striker to a left midfielder was a masterstroke.

As he often said: "I let my side do the talking for me."

Indeed, what he may have lacked as an orator, he made up for with a record on the pitch that spoke volumes.

Few managers can claim to have brought through some of the greatest players of the post-war era but that is exactly what Bob did.

Alan Hansen, Graeme Souness, Alan Kennedy, Ronnie Whelan, Ian Rush, Craig Johnston, Mark Lawrenson, Bruce Grobbelaar, Steve Nicol - the list seems endless.

With the help of these players he soared into the stratosphere of managerial achievement by guiding Liverpool to two further European Cup triumphs. A win over Bruges at Wembley in 1978 saw the Reds retain the trophy while the mighty Real Madrid were the victims three years later in Paris.

Paisley's teams annexed a total of six championships, the most remarkable being in 1978-79 when they emerged with a record 68 points under the old two-points-for-a-win system. The campaign saw them concede a record low of 16 goals in their 42 games, with 85 goals scored and only four defeats. He also guided Liverpool to a hat-trick of League Cup successes, failing only to land the FA Cup.

That gap in his collection was bearable given his torrent of triumphs and he passed command on to Joe Fagan in 1983, having amassed a grand total of 23 Bells Managerial Awards.

On retirement, he was elected to the board of directors and was an advisor to Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool's first player-manager, before being tragically stricken with Alzheimer's Disease.

It says it all about the great man that three of the club's finest servants have no hesitation in hailing him as the finest manager of all-time.

Kenny Dalglish, Alan Hansen and Graeme Souness, the world class Scottish trio signed by Paisley and a threesome not given to hyperbole, unhesitatingly place him at the management summit.

"There was only one Bob Paisley and he was the greatest of them all," said Dalglish. "He went through the card in football. He played for Liverpool, he treated the players, he coached them, he managed them and then he became a director."

"He could tell if someone was injured and what the problem was just by watching them walk a few paces. He was never boastful but had great football knowledge. I owe Bob more than I owe anybody else in the game. There will never be another like him."

Hansen agreed, declaring: "I go by records and Bob Paisley is the No.1 manager ever."

While Souness saluted him thus: "When you talk of great managers there's one man at the top of the list and that's Bob Paisley."

If that wasn't enough, then his achievements were summed up perfectly by Canon John Roberts at his funeral service at St Peter's, Woolton in February 1996 when he saluted him as an ordinary man of extraordinary greatness.

The world of football, not least Liverpool FC, was enriched by his massive and exemplary contribution to it.

On Thursday April 8, 1999 the club officially opened The Paisley Gateway as an enduring monument to this great man.

His achievements in such a short period in charge cannot be underestimated, nor will they ever be eclipsed and he is quite rightly recognised, by many within the football community, as the undisputed Manager of the Millennium.


http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/history/past-managers/bob-paisley

You've missed out hodgson 

funny that isn't it?! However did i manage to forget him? One of the benefits of amnesia and seeing a therapist! Makes all the bad stuff go away!

As well as being a fantastic manager for us it should remembered that Bob Paisley was a bloody good footballer for us as well.Bob played as he managed  and only had one thought and that was to win.He was in the team that won the 1st division in 1947 and like so many of that team missed out on a lot of football between 1939 and 1945 due to the 2nd world war.I have many memories of Bob when he was trainer and the days when he would run onto the pitch to treat an injured player with a bucket and sponge (no high tech stuff in those days. Liverpool Football Club were the lucky club when Bob Paisley signed for us in May 1939 from Bishop Auckland who he played for as an amateur.

Nice to see an article praising Bob's tenure at Anfield and a couple of nice little xmas gifts as a bonus.

Comment: Remembering the remarkable Liverpool manager Bob Paisley, nice guy and winner

It goes without saying that Bob Paisley would not have settled too well into the Harvard Business School role which Sir Alex Ferguson began enjoying in the months before retiring to such a fanfare.

Paisley managed Liverpool to 19 trophies in nine years – a ratio of 2.1 per year, against Ferguson’s 1.3 in four times that period – but he also found communication with the world outside Anfield difficult. So excruciatingly difficult, in fact, that when he was finally persuaded – against his will – to take the job Bill Shankly vacated, he gathered together the four or five newspaper journalists he trusted and told them: “I’m not good at this. I can’t finish my sentences. You’ll have to finish them for me…” So, in a compact which provides a beautiful twist on the way Ferguson used the press, they did just that – agreeing between themselves on what Paisley meant when he spoke in that high-strained dialect of Hetton-le-Hole, Co Durham, which those who knew him still spontaneously break into when they remember him.

There were no authorised autobiographies for Paisley, either. It was a full 16 years after his departure from the Anfield dugout before the definitive biography Bob Paisley: Manager of the Millennium was written by John Keith, one of that group of journalists who interpreted his utterances. You won’t find the book propelling Paisley into a posthumous Christmas ratings battle with Ferguson because it is out of print.

And that is why, at the end of a year in which we have celebrated Ferguson and Shankly so richly, the telling insights into Paisley’s qualities and methods provided by two new books on Liverpool are so welcome. His abilities are delivered with excellent understatement in Simon Hughes’ Red Machine (Mainstream, £15.99). Paisley’s capacity, for example, to intuit which players were susceptible to injury while watching a match is related to Hughes by Bruce Grobbelaar, one of 10 players from that era whose stories the book tells. “It meant that during games he’d tell our wingers to take on their marker in a certain way. ‘The right back has a sore left leg. Take him on the outside and come in on the inside – you’ll kill him,’” Grobbelaar relates. “Nine times out of 10 he was right. He was a genius. I loved the man so much.”

The eccentricities and sheer incomprehensibility of the man – Craig Johnston remembers Paisley calling him to say, “Eeer. eerp, it’s Bob Paisley, ere like y’naw… We’d like to sign ye, like” – have contributed to history’s characterisation of him as merely fortunate enough to reap what Shankly sowed. But that myth does Paisley a great disservice. Shankly’s capacity to claim silverware for Liverpool dried up entirely between 1966 and 1973 and Paisley’s promotion in 1974 brought something different, to have the trophy cabinet overflowing again. That extraordinary ratio of over two trophies a season is his alone.

Keith tells me the 1970 FA Cup quarter-final defeat to Second Division Watford helped shape Paisley’s conviction that Shankly, who never fined a player, was too loyal at times. Graeme Souness tells Jonathan Wilson in the journalist’s own new book The Anatomy of Liverpool (Orion, £18.99) that Paisley’s avuncular image obscured an individual “who ruled Anfield with a rod of iron. He was a commanding man and few dared mess with him”.

Perhaps that was shaped by his wartime experience which, compared with Ferguson’s Govan legend, remains virtually unknown. Yesterday was as good a time as any to pause for thought at Paisley’s four war years overseas, including service with the Eighth Army at El Alamein, taking cover on the day a plane sprayed bullets over his hideout. “When the plane had gone, Bob had his hands over his eyes saying, ‘I can’t see. I’m blind,” a comrade-in-arms related. He soon brushed off the terror of his temporary affliction when he made it home. Wilson observes that, as Shankly’s assistant, Paisley played a key part in determining Liverpool’s style. His eye for a player was also manifest in signings like Alan Hansen, Phil Neal, Kenny Dalglish and Souness.

In these post-Ferguson days, when every football conversation turns to the enormity of "The Chosen One"’ inheritance, it is worth pausing to consider what Paisley faced, early in the 1974-75 season, with Kevin Keegan suspended for two months and Neal and Terry McDermott acclimatising. Many clubs have suffered after successions like that: Leeds after Revie, Nottingham Forest after Clough, Manchester United after Busby. Paisley didn’t flinch.

Though it is hard to argue against Brian Clough as the foremost club manager of all time, turning water into wine not once but twice, at Derby County and Nottingham Forest, Paisley stands right behind him on the grounds of trophies delivered with a team of his own creation. And though it has no relevance to the question of relative greatness, he did it without unpleasantness, too. “He had a smile as wide as Stockton High Street,” said Clough, alluding upon Paisley’s death in 1996 to the Teesside town they both knew well. “He has exorcised the silly myth that nice guys don’t win anything.” How shrewd was that judgement. Paisley said in 1982: “Ranting and raving gets you nowhere in football. If you want to be heard, speak quietly”. A message for these frenetic times.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/comment-remembering-the-remarkable-liverpool-manager-bob-paisley-nice-guy-and-winner-8933648.html

you also have to give tremendous respect to the board at that time who went from Shankley to Paisley to Fagan to Kenny they new what this club needed from its managers.

you also have to give tremendous respect to the board at that time who went from Shankley to Paisley to Fagan to Kenny they new what this club needed from its managers.

We got Colin Pascoe after Rodgers

 Just sitting here thinking about Bob and I can still picture him as a player,as a trainer and as our manager.You could not get enough words from a dictionary to describe what Bob meant to this club and what this club meant to Bob.R.I.P. Bob you were the best.

Just sitting here thinking about Bob and I can still picture him as a player,as a trainer and as our manager.You could not get enough words from a dictionary to describe what Bob meant to this club and what this club meant to Bob.R.I.P. Bob you were the best.

story goes that both he and Joe Fagan built the dugouts at Anfield don't think health and safety would go for that these days.But what a man and if ever the tag Legend applied to anyone he would be top of my list.

For me there is only three words that describes the late great
'Sir' Bob Paisley,

I'll say it quietly ,

     'SIMPLY THE BEST'

RIP Bob.     YNWA

My first ever league game at Anfield, on my dad's season ticket, in 83 when we lost to Aston Villa, but were presented the league title.

3 European cups in 5 seasons, plus the UEFA Cup the season before the first European cup for me makes him best manager of all time.

Bob > Fergie

In everyway...

 Bob Paisley, .............. What made Ferguson a bitter twisted old man. First is first and second is nowhere !

Now where have I heard that before ?

I always looked at it like,  Shanks baked a brilliant cake, and Bob put the icing on !

Bob Paisley, .............. What made Ferguson a bitter twisted old man. First is first and second is nowhere !

Now where have I heard that before ?

I always looked at it like,  Shanks baked a brilliant cake, and Bob put the icing on !

Then Joe Fagan put the candles on the icing and along came Kenny Dalglish to light the candles.

Then Joe Fagan put the candles on the icing and along came Kenny Dalglish to light the candles.

Then Souness blew the candles out

Then Souness blew the candles out

Souness pissed on all our candles mate.

Can´t get enough of this one:

During Paisley's reign, Liverpool set an all-time record of 85 home games unbeaten, in all competitions. This run included 63 league matches, also a league record, and stretched over 3 years from January 1978 to January 1981.

Truly amazing - thanks Bob

Sir Bob's success is unmatched in English football and has led to dementure and alcoholism in pretenders striving to equal his record.

            Sir Bob (three European Cups) Paisley


            RIP

we had good people back then really good men who also happened to know football inside out.I doubt Bob or Joe had ever heard of a spread sheet and the only stat they measured things by was winning or losing .

Then Souness blew the candles out

f***in Hell mate did you have to contaminate this thread.

A few years back I was looking through in detail the 75-76 season with the help of the local and national newspapers of the time. What suprised me was how much sniping there was at Bob and his tactics from rival managers like John Bond and even some of our own supporters. The received wisdom is that it was a seamless transition from Shankly to Paisley but certainly by 76 the pressure was on Liverpool to succeed and many comments suggested Bob Paisley was not the man for the job. In Bobs first season they had blown the chance to win the title on the penultimate Saturday by losing to Middlesborough. The following season Liverpool played pragmatic rather than sparkling football and lost home games to Norwich {the game Mike Myers attended?) and Middlesborough while playing out an uninspired draw at home to Coventry....the day that Bill Shankly watched the game from the Kop.

In the new year Ray Kennedy started to flourish in a new midfield role, local scousers Case and Fairclough were introduced into the team on a more regular basis and Tommy Smith, whos career looked over at Anfield regained his place in the team at right back. But it was only at the back end of the season that Liverpool really took control of their destiny which of course culminated in that famous night in Wolves and is the reason for my username. That game is in the vaults of the bbc...if it has not been destroyed....and it is still one of the most important victories in our history because it set in motion a nine year period of success which has never been replicated by any manager in the British game. Not even by you know who! It also led to us qualifying for the European Cup the following season...winning it....and becoming the finest team in Europe over the following years while massively increasing a global fanbase which exists to this day.   Without Wolves in 76,  who knows what would have happened to Paisleys Liverpool.  Thank you Bob. You were the very best and your legacy stands tall.

Nice bit of history there mate thanks for sharing.

Thank you no worries.....Im a bit too nerdily obsessed with that season cos it is about to lead our most successful ever period. I do think it is terribly undervalued in our history and Id give anything to see the Wolves Liverpool title decider!

That game at Wolves in '76 was not only about the game. If you were there, it was like no other match. The atmosphere and events that took place around, and inside the ground were like nothing I have experienced ever, anywhere.
I took the afternoon off work and hitch hiked to wolves on my own, due to the importance of the match for me. Never in a million years was I expecting to witness what I did, and never did I ever think of what it might lead to. It took me most of the night to get home, but the memories I have, are like it was yesterday.
 I could write a book about the night and what I witnessed. One of, if not the, greatest footballing memories I have.