Liverpool knew what it meant to us and what was at stake. They are proper football folk and tried to put us at ease

direct route instead of going down the stairs and through the tunnel. You could say he went over the top!

“Liverpool looked after us pretty well then we went back to Northcote Manor, a hotel in the Blackburn area. We all had a drink there. Everybody then wanted to go back to their own families and friends.

“Kenny and all the players went to a bistro in Preston. I ended up in my local pub The

Bonny Inn, probably coming out at 2.30am.

“I was a very lucky guy, being chairman in these exciting years. None of it would have happened without Jack. We all worked hard at it.

“Nobody at the time thought anyone outside the big six could win the Premier League. We proved them wrong and Leicester did the same. You need this in sport.”

Blackburn’s rise was phenomenal, Walker only buying into the club four years previously.

Coar added: “He was based in Jersey, but Blackburn through and through. He would fly over on a Saturday morning, have lunch and then the two bits of the day he really looked forward to was going into the dressing room at around 2.40pm for 10 minutes, talking to the players before the game. “Then he’d go again into the dressing room just after 5pm and have another chat, would come back upstairs and leave the ground at 6pm for Jersey.

“His first ambition, once we got going, was to win the FA Cup because he probably felt that would be easier than the league.

“Everybody was rebuilding grounds in those days because we had only just had the Taylor report in the aftermath of Hillsborough.

“We managed to build three brand new stands inside 20 months.”

Coar, who acted as the conduit between Walker and Dalglish, was the man charged with making some ambitious transfers happen.

In came Tim Flowers, David Batty, Chris Sutton, Sherwood and Shearer.

“Quite a lot of the players we brought in wanted to come because of Kenny being manager and also through Ray Harford, Kenny’s assistant,” added the former chairman.

“Ray was very important because he had been the England Under-21 coach. He identified players such as

Tim Sherwood and Alan Shearer. I used to go down to the training ground and ask Kenny if there was anything he wanted. I’d then relay things to Jack.

“Kenny always insisted that there was a certain figure we would go to in order to sign a player – but not to go beyond it. He always very canny with money. He was prepared to walk away from deals if he felt we were overpaying. He saw it as an embarrassment to him if he was seen to be paying over the odds for a player with Jack’s money.

“If Kenny didn’t want you to understand something, he would revert to his best broad Glaswegian.

“He’s got such a great sense of humour. Ray was the same, as was Tony Parkes, who was so dry. It made the repertoire unforgettable.

“It was a fantastic place to be.”