Bill Shankly

Early life

Bill Shankly was born in the small Scottish coal mining village of Glenbuck, Ayrshire, whose population in 1913, the year of Shankly's birth, was around 700. People born there would often move to find work in larger coal mines. As a result, Glenbuck became largely derelict and by the time Shankly's ghost writer John Roberts visited it in 1976, there were only 12 houses left, including a cottage owned by Shankly's sister, Elizabeth, whom Roberts described as "the last of the children of Glenbuck".

Shankly's parents, John and Barbara, lived in one of the Auchenstilloch Cottages with their 10 children; five boys and five girls. William was the ninth child and the youngest boy. Although he was known as Bill throughout his football career, his name in the family was Willie, pronounced [Wullie]. His father was a postman who became a tailor of handmade suits. Despite the football pedigree in his family, he did not play himself.

All five Shankly brothers played professional football and Shankly claimed they could have beaten any five brothers in the world when they were all at their peaks. His brothers were Alec, known as Sandy by the family, who played for Ayr United and Clyde; Jimmy (1902–1972), who played for various clubs including Sheffield United and Southend United; John (1903–1960), who played for Portsmouth and Luton Town; and Bob (1910–1982), who played for Alloa Athletic and Falkirk. Bob became a successful manager, guiding Dundee to victory in the Scottish championship in 1962 and the semi-finals of the European Cup the following year. Their maternal uncles, Robert and William Blyth were professional players who both became club directors at Portsmouth and Carlisle United respectively.

Shankly wrote in his autobiography that times were hard during his upbringing and that hunger was a prevailing condition, especially during the winter months. He admitted that he and his friends used to steal vegetables from nearby farms; bread, biscuits and fruit from suppliers' wagons, and bags of coal from the pits. Shankly admitted the act was wrong but stated these acts were driven by youth, mischief and constant hunger. He said that he and his friends learned from their mistakes and became better people in later years. He was at school from age five until 14. Discipline at both home and school was strict but Shankly said it was character-building. His favourite subject was geography and he played football as often as possible, especially in the school playground, but there was no organised school team.

Playing career

Carlisle United

Shankly had a single season, 1932–33, at Carlisle United, then relatively new to the Football League and playing in the Third Division North, their reserve side playing in the North Eastern League. Shankly was recommended by scout Peter Carruthers, who had seen him playing for Cronberry. He was invited for a month's trial and said it was the first time he had left Scotland. He was signed after just one trial match for Carlisle's reserves against Middlesbrough reserves, even though Carlisle reserves lost the match 6–0. A local newspaper report said that he had worked hard and might develop into a useful left back. In fact, he developed into a top-class right-half.

Shankly made his senior debut on 31 December 1932 in a 2–2 draw against Rochdale and made 16 appearances for the first team. At the end of the season, the reserves won the North Eastern League Cup, defeating Newcastle United reserves 1–0 in the final. In his 1976 autobiography, Shankly stated that he still had the medal.

At this stage of his career, Shankly was assessed as "a hard running, gritty right-half" whose displays brought him much praise and credit. He was considered a promising key young player who was capable of taking Carlisle to greater things. He was paid £4 and ten shillings a week at Carlisle, which he considered a good wage as the top rate at that time was £8. Shankly was happy at Carlisle, which was close to his home at Glenbuck, and he had settled in well with almost a guarantee of first team football. When the opportunity came for him to move on, he was not convinced he wanted to leave.

Preston North End

Soon after the 1932–33 season ended, Shankly received a telegram from Carlisle United asking him to return as soon as possible because another club wanted to sign him. Arriving at Carlisle, he discovered that the interested club was Preston North End who had offered a transfer fee of £500. The terms for Shankly personally were a fee of £50 plus a £10 signing-on fee and wages of £5 a week (equivalent to £309 in 2025). Shankly's initial reaction was that it was not enough and the deal nearly fell through. His brother Alec pointed out to him that Preston were in the Second Division and a bigger club than Carlisle with the potential to regain First Division status. Alec persuaded him that the opportunity was more important than what he would be paid immediately, stressing that it was what he would get later that counted. Shankly took his brother's advice and signed the Preston contract in a railway carriage.

Shankly began his Preston career in the reserves, who played in the Central League which was a higher standard than the North Eastern League. He made his first team debut on 9 December 1933, three months after his 20th birthday, against Hull City. Shankly created an early goal to help Preston win 5–0, earning him praise in a national newspaper for his "clever passing". With his wholehearted attitude and commitment to the team, he quickly established himself as a first-team regular and became a crowd favourite. Preston fulfilled their potential and gained promotion to the First Division as runners-up to Grimsby Town. It was therefore a successful debut season for Shankly who stayed with Preston until he retired in 1949. His wage was increased to eight pounds a week with six pounds in the summer. In a summary of the 1933–34 season, a Preston correspondent, Walter Pilkington, wrote:

One of this season's discoveries, Bill Shankly, played with rare tenacity and uncommonly good ideas for a lad of 20. He is full of good football and possessed with unlimited energy; he should go far.

In his autobiography, Shankly wrote that Preston had more than held their own in the 1934–35 season and the club was not relegated again until the end of the 1948–49 season in which he left them. Shankly developed into a tough half back, as good as any in the Football League. The outstanding Northern Ireland international Peter Doherty recalled how Shankly dogged his footsteps in one match and kept muttering: "Great wee team, North End, great wee team", subduing Doherty completely as Preston defeated Manchester City 3–1.

Scotland

Shankly played for Scotland 12 times from 1938 to 1943 in five full and seven wartime internationals. He spoke of his "unbelievable pride" when playing for Scotland against England and how, when confronted by the "Auld Enemy", the Scottish players would become William Wallace or Robert the Bruce for 90 minutes after pulling on the blue jersey. Shankly himself certainly had that spirit when playing for Scotland as confirmed by Alex James, who said of Shankly: "He is a real Scotland player who will fight until he drops".

Shankly made his international debut on 9 April 1938 against England at Wembley; Scotland winning the match 1–0 with a late goal by Tommy Walker. Nine of his Scotland appearances were against England and the others were against Northern Ireland, Wales and Hungary. He was Scotland's captain in the wartime match against England at Hampden Park, attended by 78,000 people on 3 May 1941, but Scotland lost that game 1–3. Perhaps his most memorable international was the wartime game at Wembley on 18 April 1942 when Scotland won 5–4 and Shankly scored his only Scotland goal. A post-match report said that Scotland's success was inspired by "the Busby–Shankly victory service" when Shankly and his future management rival Matt Busby combined to help Scotland's cause. According to the Liverpool website, Shankly's goal was "probably the strangest national goal ever". He took a speculative shot towards goal from 50 yards and the ball bounced over the England goalkeeper's head and into the net. In January 1973, when Shankly was the subject of This Is Your Life broadcast on ITV, the goal was shown and Shankly commented that "they all count and we won".

Style and technique

Shankly declared in his autobiography that he specialised in what he called "the art of tackling", emphasising that it is an art. He wrote that he was never sent off or booked by a referee. In his view, the art of tackling is in the timing and the sole object is to win the ball. He wrote that even if the opponent is injured in the tackle, it is not a foul if you have timed everything right and you have won the ball. His philosophy, therefore, was to play hard but fair with no cheating. During his playing career, Shankly said he would not argue with referees. He realised after taking the advice of his brothers that it is a waste of time. The referee, he wrote, always wins in the end.

Shankly was always noted for his dedication to football and, in his playing days, would do his own training during the summer months. During the summer of 1933 when he returned to Glenbuck after completing his first season as a professional, he decided to develop his throw-in skills. He was an early exponent of the long throw-in – he practised by throwing balls over a row of houses and the small boys of the village helped by fetching them back for him.

Management career

Shankly wrote in his autobiography that he had long prepared himself for a career as a football manager. He had absorbed all the coaching systems with any useful qualifications and had full confidence in his ability and in himself to be a leader. For him, he had done the hard work and it was simply a question of waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Shankly summed up the essential criteria for success in football management when he claimed he could speak common sense about the game and could spot a good player. In spotting a player, he always applied a basic formula which was that, first and foremost, the player must have both ability and courage. Other attributes were physical fitness and willingness to work, especially to struggle against the odds.

Carlisle United

Shankly began his managerial career at Carlisle United, the club where his professional playing career had started. Carlisle in the 1948–49 season were struggling in the bottom half of the Third Division North and finding it difficult to attract southern-based players because of the city's geographic remoteness in the far north of England. Shankly's work ethic transformed the team who finished 15th in 1948–49 after he had been in charge for only the last few matches. They improved to ninth in 1949–50 and then to third in 1950–51, almost gaining promotion.

One of Shankly's players at Carlisle was Geoff Twentyman, then a promising young centre half, who was later transferred to Liverpool. After he retired from playing, Twentyman became chief scout at Liverpool, working with Shankly and finding several outstandingly talented players.

Shankly used psychology to motivate his players, for example telling them that the opposition had had a very tiring journey and were not fit to play the match. He urged the local population to support the team and would use the public address system at matches to tell the crowd about his team changes and how his strategy was improving the team. Shankly recalled that Brunton Park was dilapidated, writing that the main stand was falling to pieces and the terraces derelict. He even burned all the kits. When the team was travelling to Lincoln City, he saw a sportswear shop in Doncaster and stopped the coach to buy a full set of kits in which the team played at Lincoln.

Season ticket sales in 1950–51 reached an all-time high and Carlisle challenged strongly for promotion as well as achieving a draw with Arsenal at Highbury in the FA Cup. It ended badly, however, because Shankly accused the club's board of reneging on a bonus promise for the players should the team finish in the top three of the league. He resigned and accepted an offer from Grimsby Town. Shankly's overall record in league football at Carlisle was 42 wins and 22 defeats from 95 matches.

Grimsby Town

After an unsuccessful interview at Liverpool, Shankly moved to manage Grimsby Town in June 1951. He said in his autobiography that there was greater potential at Grimsby than at Carlisle. His main problems were that Grimsby had been relegated twice in recent seasons, dropping from the First to the Third Division, and some good players had been transferred before he arrived. Even so, Shankly believed he still had good players to work with and was able to buy some additional players on the transfer market for low fees.

Grimsby made a strong challenge for promotion in 1951–52 but finished second, three points behind Lincoln City (only one team was promoted from Division Three North, with one from Division Three South). Shankly insisted in his autobiography that his Grimsby team was:

Pound for pound, and class for class, the best football team I have seen in England since the war. In the league they were in, they played football nobody else could play. Everything was measured, planned and perfected and you could not wish to see more entertaining football.

Shankly's biographer Stephen Kelly quotes the "pound for pound" analysis but qualifies it as another of Shankly's slight, though well-meant, exaggerations. Kelly added that this kind of talk by Shankly could only boost morale at the club.

Shankly made great use of five-a-side football in training at Grimsby, playing these games as if they were competitive cup or league matches. The games would last an hour each time. Shankly worked on set pieces such as throw-ins and tried to devise a method of counter-attacking from corners conceded.

Grimsby's ageing team made a bright start in 1952–53 with five straight wins but eventually slipped and finished in fifth place. In 1953–54, Shankly became disillusioned when the board could not give him money to buy new players. He was reluctant to promote some promising reserves because of loyalty to the older players (a fault that was to resurface at Liverpool years later) and he finally resigned in January 1954, citing the board's lack of ambition as his main reason. In his autobiography, he said that he and his wife were feeling homesick in Grimsby and, when an opportunity came to manage Workington, he was attracted to the challenge partly because they would be closer to Scotland. Shankly's record in league football at Grimsby was 62 wins and 35 defeats from 118 matches.

Workington

Although the Workington team was close to the bottom of the Third Division North, Shankly saw it as a challenge and attacked the job with all of his usual enthusiasm and relish. Workington rose to 18th by the end of the 1953–54 season and so did not have to apply for re-election. In 1954–55, the team finished a creditable eighth and saw a rise in attendances from 6,000 to 8,000.

Workington operated on a shoestring and Shankly had to do much of the administration work himself, including answering the telephone and dealing with the mail by using an old typewriter to answer letters. In addition, he had the risky job of going to the bank each week to collect the payroll. One of his main problems was sharing the ground with the local rugby league club and Shankly was very concerned about the damage done to the playing surface by the rugby players. The situation led to numerous arguments with the club's board which, as Kelly records, included a majority of rugby league men whose interest in football took second place to rugby.

Shankly resigned on 15 November 1955 to take up the post of assistant manager at Huddersfield Town, working with his old friend Andy Beattie. His record in league football at Workington was 35 wins and 27 defeats from 85 matches.

Huddersfield Town

Shankly's initial role at Huddersfield was as reserve team coach. He found himself in charge of several promising youngsters who soon graduated to the first team after Town were relegated to the Second Division at the end of the 1955–56 season. Beattie resigned in the next season and, on 5 November 1956, Shankly succeeded him as manager. On Christmas Eve, he gave a first team debut to 16-year-old prospect Denis Law. Law said Shankly "made you believe you were something special", and club historian Ian Thomas stated, "Denis Law recalls the players hanging on his every word". Another prospect in his team was left back Ray Wilson who went on to become Huddersfield's most capped player before joining Everton. Shankly did not gain promotion at Huddersfield, the team finishing 12th in 1956–57, ninth in 1957–58 and 14th in 1958–59.

Other players in Shankly's Huddersfield team were Ken Taylor, who was an England Test cricketer; striker Les Massie and captain Bill McGarry. On 21 December 1957, Huddersfield lost 7–6 to Charlton Athletic, who played most of the match with ten men, after Huddersfield were leading 5–1 with just 27 minutes remaining. Shankly described it as one of the most amazing games he had ever seen. On another occasion, Huddersfield beat Liverpool 5–0 with ten men and Shankly recalled the Liverpool directors leaving the ground in single file as if they were in a funeral procession.

Disillusioned by a board that wanted to sell his best players without offering money to buy replacements, Shankly felt stifled by Huddersfield's lack of ambition and was delighted in November 1959 to receive an approach for his services by Liverpool. He recalled how Liverpool chairman Tom (T. V.) Williams asked him if he would like to manage the best club in the country, to which Shankly replied: "Why, is Matt Busby packing up?" Shankly decided to think about the offer as he realised the great potential at Liverpool, who like Huddersfield were in the Second Division at that time. Rumours began and were fuelled by Liverpool's visit to Leeds Road on 28 November. Although Huddersfield won the game 1–0, Shankly accepted the Liverpool offer and resigned his position as Huddersfield manager at a board meeting on 1 December 1959. His league record at Huddersfield was 49 wins and 47 defeats in 129 matches.

Liverpool

When Shankly arrived at Anfield on Monday, 14 December 1959, Liverpool had been in the Second Division for five years, and had been defeated by non-league Worcester City in the 1958–59 FA Cup. Anfield itself was in disrepair with no means of watering the pitch and Shankly insisted the club spend £3,000 to rectify that. Shankly described the training ground at Melwood as "a shambles". The Liverpool squad he inherited consisted largely of average players and some promising reserves.

In spite of the difficulties, Shankly quickly felt at home in his new club and believed he shared an immediate bond with the supporters, whom he saw as his kind of people. He quickly established working relationships with the coaching staff of Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Reuben Bennett who shared his views about loyalty to each other and to the club. Paisley's influence at Liverpool was crucial for, as Kelly puts it, Shankly was "the great motivating force behind Liverpool, but it was Paisley who was the tactician". One aspect of the quartet's legacy to football was the conversion of an old storage room into what became known as the "Boot Room", which was used for tactical discussion while cleaning and repairing boots. Although Shankly believed he had an excellent coaching staff, hence his first decision at the club was to retain them rather than bring in his own, a decision which sportswriter John Keith says displayed "remarkable football foresight", the playing staff were not so impressive – indeed, Shankly said of the latter:

After only one match I knew that the team as a whole was not good enough. I made up my mind that we needed strengthening through the middle, a goalkeeper and a centre half who between them could stop goals, and somebody up front to create goals and score them.

To deal with what he saw as a below average squad, he placed 24 players on the transfer list. All of them had left the club within one year. Shankly pursued his strength through the middle goal and knew which three players he needed to achieve it.

Melwood was overgrown and had only an old wooden cricket pavilion. Shankly commented that one of the pitches looked as if bombs had been dropped on it and he asked if the Germans had been over in the war. He instituted a development programme to cultivate the site and modernise the facilities. In the meantime, he arranged for the players to meet and change at Anfield before going to and from Melwood by bus. According to Kelly, Liverpool's eventual success was based on hard work done in the training system that Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Bennett introduced at Melwood. Shankly deplored long-distance running on roads and insisted that, apart from warm-up exercises or any special exercises needed to overcome injuries, the players trained on grass using a ball. Everything was done systematically with players rotating through exercise routines in groups with the purpose of achieving set targets. These would first cycle through athletic exercises, like skipping or squats, before moving on to football-specific functions, such as heading the ball or chipping it. Five-a-side games, as at all Shankly's earlier clubs, were at the heart of the system and he again insisted on these being as competitive as league matches. Shankly trained among the players in order to closely monitor them, instructing anyone overworking to "simmer down", or those who needed to be "encouraged occasionally to do a little more".

Relationship with fans

In his autobiography, Shankly wrote: "Right from the start as a manager [i.e., when he was at Carlisle] I tried to show that the fans are the people that matter. You've got to know how to treat them (and) have them on your side". This was particularly true at Liverpool and Shankly said he was made for Liverpool where the people that matter most are the ones who come through the turnstiles. He added that a manager has got to identify himself with the people because their team is something that really matters to them. In return, he said, the support of the Liverpool fans for their team had been incredible.

In April 1973, when Shankly and the team were showing off the League Championship trophy to the fans on the Kop, he saw a policeman fling aside a Liverpool scarf which had been thrown in Shankly's direction. Shankly retrieved the scarf and wore it. He said to the policeman: "Don't you do that. That's precious". Shankly saw the offer of the scarf as a mark of respect which deserved his respect in return.

Shankly emphasised the importance of communication with the supporters. At Carlisle, rather than writing in the programme, he used the public address system to speak and explain his team changes and his views about the previous match. At Workington, he would answer supporters' letters in person, using an old typewriter. He said he preferred to phone business people as he would put as little as possible in writing when dealing with them. He would readily obtain match tickets for fans whom he considered to be deserving cases and wrote in his autobiography that he would give people anything within reason. A young Everton fan wrote to Shankly saying while he did not like Liverpool was it possible he could have tickets for the Merseyside derby. Two tickets were sent with Shankly observing: "I admire the boy's honesty."

Shankly formed a special bond with the Liverpool supporters and, at the end of the 1961–62 season when Liverpool won the Second Division championship, he told the Liverpool Echo: "In all sincerity, I can say that they are the greatest crowd of supporters in the game". In Tommy Smith's view, Shankly was completely in tune with the city of Liverpool; he loved the supporters and they loved him, mainly because they knew he understood them. John Keith writes, "His bond with the Liverpool supporters — "the people", as he called them, was surely the most powerful football has ever experienced." On his connection with Liverpool supporters, Shankly: "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".

Retirement from Liverpool

Shankly was 60 when Liverpool won the 1974 FA Cup final and said in his autobiography that, on returning to the dressing room at the end of the match, he felt tired from all the years. His mind was made up and he knew he was going to retire. His wife, Nessie, had asked him to retire a year earlier but he decided that was not the right time. Tommy Smith said that Shankly's feelings for Nessie were undoubtedly a major reason for his decision. In 1974, he decided that he could leave Liverpool with pride in a job well done and only one regret, which was that he did not win the European Cup.

Shankly had considered retirement in previous years. The Liverpool secretary Peter Robinson was initially blasé in 1974 but, when he realised Shankly was serious this time, tried to make him change his mind. Shankly's granddaughter, Karen Gill, said to The Observer in 2009: "I think that perhaps it was tiredness, that football had taken its toll on him". In her 2006 book about her grandfather, Karen Gill said Shankly never professed anything privately about retirement that he did not declare publicly. She did not agree that there was any hidden motive behind his decision and she thought Brian Clough's view about tiredness was probably correct.

Shankly's retirement was officially and surprisingly announced at a press conference called by Liverpool on 12 July 1974. Chairman, John Smith, said in his opening address:

It is with great regret that I as chairman of Liverpool Football Club have to inform you that Mr Shankly has intimated that he wishes to retire from active participation in league football. And the board has with extreme reluctance accepted his decision. I would like to at this stage place on record the board's great appreciation of Mr Shankly's magnificent achievements over the period of his managership.

On his decision to retire, Shankly: "It was the most difficult thing in the world, when I went to tell the chairman. It was like walking to the electric chair." On the same day of his retirement, Ray Kennedy signed for a club record £200,000, with Shankly, who had admired Kennedy for years, stating "maybe it will be said that one of the last things I did at this club was to sign a great new player". Shankly soon regretted his decision to retire and tried to continue his involvement with the club, mainly by turning up for team training at Melwood. He said he still wanted the involvement as the club had become his life. He soon stopped going to Melwood because he felt there was some resentment and people were asking what he was doing there. He still attended matches, but sat in the stand away from the directors and staff. He was especially annoyed that Liverpool did not invite him to attend away matches as the club's guest. When, finally, he was invited to travel with them to the away leg of the 1976 UEFA Cup final in Bruges, he was accommodated in a separate hotel and said he found that insulting. Shankly contrasted Liverpool's attitude with what he encountered at other clubs, including Liverpool's great rivals Everton and Manchester United, where he was received warmly. He recalled Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty's comment to a Liverpool director that he (Shankly) was welcome at Old Trafford. About Everton, once his greatest rivals, he wrote that he had been received more warmly by Everton than by Liverpool. He said it was a scandal that he needed to say that about the club he had helped to build.

Later years

Shankly was awarded the OBE in November 1974, four months after he retired as Liverpool manager. He and Nessie went to Buckingham Palace and, according to Kelly, that was a rare day out for them. They continued to live in the semi-detached house at West Derby, near the Everton training ground at Bellefield, which they bought when they moved to Liverpool in 1959. After Shankly's death in 1981, Nessie lived there alone until she died in August 2002.

In realising he had made a mistake in retiring, he said "retire is a terrible, silly word. They should get a new word for it. The only time you retire is when you're in a box and the flowers come out." Shankly tried to keep busy and stay in touch with football. He worked for Radio City, a Liverpool station on which he presented his own chat show, once interviewing prime minister Harold Wilson, and was a pundit on its football coverage. He briefly took up advisory roles at Wrexham and then at Tranmere Rovers, helping former Liverpool captain Ron Yeats at the latter. In November 1976, the press speculated that Shankly would make a return to management as the successor to Dave Mackay at Derby County, but the position went to Colin Murphy instead. John Toshack recalled that Shankly was a great help to him when he went into management with Swansea City in 1978. Watching a Liverpool game at Anfield from the directors' box in 1980, he was approached there by Alex Ferguson and his assistant Archie Knox, who behaved "like a couple of groupies" according to Ferguson, with Shankly commenting, "so, you are down to have a look at our great team. Aye, they all try that", in response to their Aberdeen side preparing to face Liverpool in a European Cup game. Despite being in his sixties, Shankly kept himself fit and often took part in five-a-side football. If nothing else was available he would join teams of youngsters in kickabouts.

Death and legacy

On the morning of 26 September 1981, Shankly was admitted to Broadgreen Hospital following a heart attack. His condition appeared to be stable and there was no suggestion that his life was in danger. On the following Monday morning, his condition suddenly deteriorated and he was transferred into intensive care. At 00:30 on 29 September, he suffered another cardiac arrest and was certified dead, aged 68, at 01:20. Supporters lined the streets of Liverpool on the day of his funeral, with many of his past players in attendance. He was cremated at the Anfield Crematorium on 2 October and his ashes were scattered on the Anfield pitch at the Kop end.

On the day of Shankly's death, training was cancelled at both Melwood and Bellefield. The Labour Party conference stood in a minute's silence for a man who had always been a socialist. Sir Matt Busby, the former Manchester United manager, was so upset that he refused to take any telephone calls from people asking him for a reaction. Tributes poured in from the world of football, especially from the former players of all Shankly's clubs. Liverpool chairman John Smith summed them up with a simple but fitting: "In my opinion, he was the most outstanding and dynamic manager of the century". On 3 October, Liverpool's first home league game since his death, the Liverpool and Swansea players stood for a minute's silence, including former red John Toshack who unveiled a Liverpool shirt from under his Swansea tracksuit. A fan on the Kop held aloft a homemade banner with the words "Shankly Lives Forever".

Liverpool erected the 15-foot-high (4.6 m) cast iron Shankly Gates in front of the Anfield Road stand. Inscribed "You'll Never Walk Alone", they were opened by Nessie Shankly at a low-key ceremony in August 1982. In 1997, a seven-foot tall bronze statue of Shankly was unveiled outside the stadium. It bears the legend: "He made the people happy". In 2016, a plinth to Shankly was installed on 96 Avenue outside Anfield. The inscription features details of Liverpool's 1965 win over Inter Milan at Anfield, the club's first great European night.

From the mid-1990s, Preston North End started a rebuild of Deepdale to convert it into a modern all-seater stadium. When the former Spion Kop end was replaced by a new stand in 1998, it was named the Bill Shankly Kop and was designed with different coloured seats depicting an image of Shankly's head and shoulders.

Personal life

Shankly was married to his wife Agnes Wren-Fisher from 1944 until his death 37 years later. They had met earlier during World War II, when Bill was serving as a Corporal with the RAF and "Nessie", who was six years younger, was serving with the WRAF. They had two daughters. Nessie survived her husband by more than 20 years, dying in August 2002 at the age of 82. On Shankly's appointment as Liverpool manager in 1959, he and his family moved into a house in Bellefield Avenue, West Derby, Liverpool. Nessie Shankly was still living there at the time of her death more than 40 years later. Upon his death in 1981 Shankly left £99,077 in his will (equivalent to £381,951 in 2025). According to a BBC report in 1974, Shankly was teetotal.

Personality

Stephen Kelly, in his 1997 biography of Shankly, calls him "the ultimate obsessive". Shankly was fanatical about Liverpool and about football in general. From coaching his players and arguing with journalists to buttonholing fans in pubs, all Shankly ever wanted to do was talk about football and to be involved in football. As a result, he had few interests outside the game other than his family. His wife Nessie told Kelly that Shankly would spend time in the garden, mowing and weeding. She could rely on him to clean the cooker when Liverpool lost. Family holidays were limited to a week in Blackpool, where they always stayed at the Norbreck Hotel. One non-football activity that Shankly did enjoy was playing cards and Ian St John said he loved it, always taking part on long coach trips to away matches.

Shankly was noted for his charismatic, outgoing personality and his wit; as a result, he is oft-quoted. His most famous quotation—'life and death'— is frequently paraphrased, and often appears in documentaries featuring him. In a May 1981 interview with Granada Television presenter Shelley Rohde, Shankly said that he had put his "heart and soul" into football "to the extent that [his] family suffered". When Rohde asked whether he regretted that devotion, he replied, "Yeah, I regret it very much", before adding:

Somebody said that football's a matter of life and death to you. I said, "Listen, it's more important than that."

Kelly wrote that, although it was said half-jokingly, so far as Shankly was concerned there was a degree of truth in what he had said. Shankly had fully realised the importance of football to its die-hard fans, himself included. It had become too important. Ian St John agreed that much of Shankly's behaviour was "bizarre", but everything was done with a purpose because Shankly always knew what he was doing and what he was saying. According to James Corbett in The Guardian: "he transformed Liverpool through sheer force of personality. As Keegan later said, he put "his character into the club in every facet from the bottom to the top". He instilled pride, discipline, loyalty and a relentless work ethic." Shankly was a father figure to many of his players, including Tommy Smith, the "Anfield Iron", who had lost his own father shortly before he signed as a 15-year-old, while John Toshack, in awe of his manager when meeting him as a 21-year-old, spoke on his impact on his players:

Honours

Individual

In April 2013, Shankly was honoured by Royal Mail in the United Kingdom, as one of ten people selected as subjects for the "Great Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.