TOSH: HOW MY SHANKS DREAM WAS SHATTERED

JOHN TOSHACK will have his feet up in his Spanish base, recovering from a knee operation and watching today’s Liverpool v Cardiff FA Cup tie with one big regret.

Toshack who left boyhood club Cardiff to form a striking partnership at Anfield with Kevin Keegan would have swapped that for the chance of managing Liverpool.

Bill Shankly, the legendary boss who brought him to Merseyside, predicted that, providing Toshack’s managerial baptism at Swansea went well, the Anfield job would be his. “I was told that, if I did my stuff at

Swansea, then the Liverpool job would be mine in the future,” said Toshack (below). “A few years later, with Bob Paisley, who had succeeded Bill, looking to leave at the end of the season, I was summoned to meet John Smith (chairman) and Peter Robinson (secretary). I thought this was it – something I had dreamt about.”

But, a few weeks later, Paisley changed his mind and wanted to stay on. When Joe Fagan eventually took over – after Liverpool decided to keep the job in-house in Boot Room tradition – Toshack sensed his hopes of stepping into Shankly’s shoes had disappeared.

There was another brief flirtation with Liverpool when the club were considering a joint managerial system with Roy Evans, but Toshack was wary and, instead, in came Gerard Houllier.

Liverpool, for Toshack, will always be about Shankly.

“After Liverpool came in for me at Cardiff, where I had spent five years becoming the club’s youngest-ever player at the age of 16, I travelled up to Merseyside by train and Bill was waiting for me on the platform,” he said.

“I’ll never forget his first words, ‘Welcome to Liverpool, son. You’ve left Sunday School – now it’s time to come to church’.

“I listened and took in every word he said. The basis of everything I’ve done in coaching I learned at Liverpool. Bill never complicated things and it’s the same now in the current Liverpool side.

“He always said that the things that were important 50 years will be important in the future – and he has been proved right.”