Ian St John believes that Liverpool Football Club would be nowhere near being in English football’s ‘big four’ in the present day if it wasn’t for the work of Bill Shankly. Shankly, who was the Reds’ manager from 1959 to 1974, brought a club that was on its knees in the old Second Division back to the forefront of English football, laying the foundations for decades of future success.
Shankly brought St John to Anfield from Motherwell in 1961 and guided Liverpool to three First Division championships, two FA Cups and UEFA Cup success. But St John – who now works as a pundit – believes those accolades pale into insignificance compared to the foundations the Scot laid for the future of the club.
“When you think about a club that had just gone down and down and down, he was the saviour,” said St John. “He was the man who resurrected it and then he said things that actually happened.
“He said: ‘we are going to do this, we are going to do that, we are going to be the greatest team, we are going to be invincible, they will have to bring a team from Mars to beat us’ – we believed him and the crowd believed him.
“He not only built a team and then built another team on the back of that, he also built the stadium. He was involved in the money coming in to revamp the stadium. He really pushed the directors in the right direction. The Liverpool of today really wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Bill Shankly.
“If Liverpool Football Club had not brought Bill Shankly in, I don’t know where we would be. We could be one of them rummaging around in the Championship or even lower.”
Shankly shocked the football world in 1974 when he announced his retirement aged 60. St John believes that – although there was an outcry at the time – his manager’s decision to step aside was necessary for his health. But his successor – Bob Paisley – wasn’t a willing replacement and St John believes he was so successful because of the preparation work by Shankly during his Anfield revolution.
“He [Shankly] was tired after ’74,” recalls St John. “He needed a rest. Bob had said to him ‘Go and have a rest, I’ll try and keep it going’.
“But Bob didn’t want the job, then he ended up moving on and winning everything. What Bob Paisley did was build on what the boss had done.
“If he [Shankly] had hung on past 1974 he probably would have been the manager who had won the European Cup. But as Bob said, Shanks had laid the foundations, built the house and all I did, he said, was put the roof on it.”
50 years have now passed since the day Shankly took over the Liverpool job and St John – who spent just two more years in football with Coventry City and Tranmere Rovers after leaving Merseyside – is grateful to his former boss for giving him the best years of his career.
“They were the best times of my football career,” admits St John. “I had 10 years at Liverpool and they were all glory years. We had a lot of success and exciting times.”
