Shanks: He was right up there with Tom Finney, Matthews and Best
BILL SHANKLY’S inimitable way with words painted Peter Thompson as one of football’s most treasured talents.
“Alongside such players as Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and George Best,” said Shankly, never one to miss a chance for exaggeration.
Veteran Liverpool supporters might not recall him being in the category of those icons but, in nearly 10 years at Anfield, Thompson became one of the flag-bearers for a team that set the standards for modern-day Liverpool.
He was a Shankly mainstay, a mercurial right-footed left-winger signed from Preston North End in 1963 for £37,000.
In today’s football money, that is probably about £50million. One of the most gifted footballers of his generation, Thompson would never make life-changing wages but became synonymous with the fabled Shankly era.
Thompson, who has died at the age of 76, was reckoned to be the final building block in the edifice being created by Shankly in the early Sixties.
In his first season, 1963-64, Thompson played all 42 games as Liverpool won the First Division title after a wait of 17 years and he was a key figure in the triumphant FA Cup run in 1965 – the first time the trophy had been won by the club.
It was a very big deal. Tens of thousands hung from every vantage point to welcome Thompson, Roger Hunt, Ian St John and the rest of the team back to Merseyside.
The following season, Liverpool were champions again while Everton won the FA Cup. It was peak Beatles time and they were heady days in the city.
There were a couple of near-misses but European success eluded Thompson and, for a player so admired, a total of 16 England caps seems a touch meagre. Thompson also enjoyed five years at Bolton, playing over 100 games, before retiring in 1978.
He and Shankly had fallen out towards the end of his Liverpool days, but the Scot went to Thompson’s testimonial and could not have been more fulsome about a player who scored 54 goals in 416 Liverpool appearances.
“If he had scored goals as well as everything else he did, he would have been in the same category as Jesus Christ,” said Shankly. More exaggeration, indeed, but there are plenty of Liverpool stalwarts who would not greatly disagree.