QUIET GENIUS WHO TOOK LIVERPOOL TO THE NEXT LEVEL
100 years after his birth, Bob Paisley’s players will line up at Anfield on Saturday to salute his legacy
There is still no statue to mark the significance of the man whose centenary will be marked at Anfield on Saturday and certainly no stand in his name, though the appreciation of him grows as the shadows lengthen on the memory of the success he delivered.
Bob Paisley was, says his onetime captain Graeme Souness, the manager who ‘took Liverpool to another level’ and who, despite helping the club to 20 trophies in nine years, ‘does not get the credit he deserves’.
It has been suggested Jurgen Klopp’s team are better, given some of the performances which offer promise of a first title since a squad including six Paisley players last won the league, 29 years ago.
Statisticians Opta calculate that teams make almost 200 more passes per game than 15 years ago. Souness says Klopp’s side will not even merit comparison with Paisley’s teams until they win silverware... ‘And I mean become multiple winners at home and in europe, too,’ he insists.
Souness says: ‘The question I get asked most is, “Wouldn’t you strugjoyous gle to play against this Liverpool team?” No. If the players in today’s team played in ours, they would find what a different world it was.
‘Our five-a- side training rules were one-touch or two-touch only, but it was slower when we played than now because we had to take an extra touch on those pitches we had. The ball was bobbling around our shins. Bob demanded we look forward at all times. he told us a square ball was cheating. It’s all possession stats now. All of the team I played in would still be winners today.’
One of Souness’s few dressing downs came at half-time on his home debut against Birmingham City, in January 1978, when he had the temerity to play a square ball across defence to Phil Thompson. ‘We don’t do the easy option just to get a touch of the ball here,’ he was told.
Different days, though Klopp has found public adoration beyond anything Paisley knew, on the way to delivering 2.2 trophies per season, against Sir Alex Ferguson’s 1.3.
The German has the common touch, while behind the seemingly genial exterior, Paisley was awkward, a man of few words. he walked with a slight limp, the consequence of a playing injury. There were few moments basking in front of the Kop. Yet the commodity he delivered was as fundamental to football success today as it was back then, an intuitive ability to buy the right players and pick the right teams. ‘he had the most ridiculous football knowledge,’ says Souness. ‘Not in a tactical way, but in an ability to see which players would fit his team best and to see where another team’s weaknesses lay. ‘What was his secret? he got the best players and put them together.’ Not all of them liked him. Paisley’s gaucheness left him struggling to admit to some that they would not be a part of the team. his coldness with some not selected was not endearing. his obsession with the starting XI limited his interest in the periphery. he was as hard as nails, leaving his coaches, Joe Fagan and ronnie Moran, to get the best out of the squad and keep them grounded. It takes courage to be tough in that way, because it does not invite the embrace of the players who might otherwise cut you some slack when things go wrong. There is little margin for error. You must get the decisions right. Jamie Carragher, one of the shrewdest assessors of the club, observed a few years ago that Paisley’s success should be viewed through this prism.
‘You always try to get to the bottom of the secrets of success and you look at this quiet man and how he’s done this,’ Carragher said. ‘You look at how ruthless he was, making those big decisions. It’s OK making big decisions for as long as you get them right.’
The cult of the manager, stronger today than ever, was beginning to take hold after Paisley reluctantly stepped into the shoes of Bill Shankly in 1974.
Brian Clough and Malcolm Allison were prototypes. But the prospect of Paisley embracing his players on the pitch, in the Klopp style, is unthinkable.
Instead, Paisley encouraged selfregulation — an ability to stand independent of managerial supervision and respond to the flux of a game. Another quality as valuable now as it was then. ‘In seven years working there, I only asked once what they expected of me,’ says Souness. ‘It was 15 minutes before my debut at West Brom and I said: “how do you want me to play?” Bob’s coach Joe Fagan said, “F*** off. We pay all that money for you and you ask us how to play? Work it out for yourself.’
The former captain feels Paisley would not survive in the 21stcentury game.
‘ he would struggle simply because of what every player expects now,’ he reflects. ‘Players wouldn’t accept a manager of such few words, now.
‘They are mollycoddled, in a way that he would not contemplate. he struggled to deal with the press and the public, too. I can’t imagine him presenting written reports to the board on players. But I can still imagine every club wanting him in their set-up, in the background, assessing, quietly imparting his knowledge.’
On Saturday, Souness will join scores of Paisley’s former players on to the pitch at half-time during Liverpool’s match against Crystal Palace to mark his birth on January 23, 1919, in a terrace house on Front Street in the Durham pit village of hetton- le- hole. Volunteers are being sought for help to lay the pieces of a Paisley mosaic for display. his family will be in attendance.
It will be a level of personal acclaim barely known to the man in question during a lifetime in which choreography and fuss so rarely featured.
‘If you want to tell anybody anything, speak softly,’ he said after passing on his mantle. ‘You’ll find they’re trying to listen to you.’
‘If today’s team played with ours they’d find out what a different world it was’ — GRAEME SOUNESS