There's a problem that has existed throughout English football for a long time, and may go some way to explaining the success we had in the 70's and 80's.
The major problem was that for many years, English coaches spent a lot of time trying to turn athletes into footballers.
Liverpool, at the same time were turning footballers into athletes.
It's a small difference, but in my mind, a crucial one and we still see it reflected in the Premier League to this day.
Some like to talk about the Prem being the best league in the world.
It's not, although it is probably the most exciting.
I think this is a very underrated part of our domination of the 70's and 80's and ironically is also part of the reason for our decline, as other coaches started to emulate our philosophy.
I'm not saying other teams didn't have good players, they obviously did, but the emphasis was always on big, strong, fast.
Our emphasis was on skill, ability, passing and reading the game and only when we knew a player had very specific qualities would we sign them, and it has to be said we had players who were pretty much complete in terms of physique and ability because of the way we trained them after we signed them.
As other clubs caught on and rejected the 80's mindset, and as money started to flood into the game, we got left behind, for a variety of reasons, but I think other clubs changing their own philosophy contributed to this, and I also think that after the demise of the bootroom we lost our way regarding what made a Liverpool player.
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