Shankly Quotes

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Whether football really is a matter of life and death is open to conjecture but what cannot be disputed is that the biggest success story in modern football was built on foundations laid by the late, great Bill Shankly. It was 50 years ago this month when a brash young Scot arrived in Liverpool with a fierce ambition to rejuvenate a football club in stark contrast to the one that stands today as the most successful in English football history.

Armed with a rapier wit and an unshakable philosophy that football is a simple game at heart, Shankly installed an ethos, a 'Liverpool way' of thinking, which brought unprecedented glory to a club languishing in the old Second Division when he took over. To mark the anniversary skysports.com look back at some of his greatest quips in tribute to one of the game's most revered characters.

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." His immortal line.

"If you are first, you are first. If you are second, you are nothing." Wonder what he'd make of the modern day obsession with finishing in the top four.

"Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple." The philosphy Liverpool's success was built on.

"A lot of football success is in the mind. You must believe that you are the best and then make sure that you are."

"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. It's a kind of marriage of people who like each other." A man of the people.

"Forget the Beatles and the other groups. The Kop is the real Liverpool sound. That's real singing."

"Liverpool was made for me and I was made for Liverpool."

"Of course I didn't take my wife to see Rochdale as an anniversary present. It was her birthday. Would I have got married in the football season? Anyway, it was Rochdale reserves." Who said romance is dead?

"I was the best manager in the game and should've won more. I didn't do anything devious. I'd fight you, and break my wife's leg if I played against her, but I wouldn't cheat her." The old smoothie.

"The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they do not know the game." Another oft repeated line.

"It was the most difficult thing in the world, when I went to tell the chairman. It was like walking to the electric chair. That's the way it felt." Shankly reflects on calling time on his managerial career.

"Take that poof bandage off, and what do you mean 'your knee', it's Liverpool's knee!" Tommy Smith is given short shrift after raising doubts over his fitness.

"Tommy Smith wasn't born. He was quarried."

"They say we're predictable. Well, Joe Louis was predictable. He'd knock his man down to the floor. Goodbye!" Liverpool fans would probably take 'predictable' today.

"If you've got three Scots in your team, you've got a chance of winning something. Any more and you've got trouble."

"My scout told me the (trialist) had football in his blood. I said aye, but it hasn't reached his legs yet."

"Brian Clough is worse than rain in Manchester. At least God stops that occasionally." Two managerial heavyweights slug it out.

"We murdered them 0-0."

"I only wanted him for the reserves." On Lou Macari, after the forward opted to spurn Liverpool in favour of Manchester United.

"Me having no education. I had to use my brains."

"At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques." Shanks puts the moneymen in their place.

"If you can't make decisions in life, you're a bloody menace. You'd be better becoming an MP!"

And on Everton....

"There are two great teams on Merseyside. Liverpool and Liverpool reserves."

"If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I'd pull the curtains."

"Don't worry Alan. At least you'll be able to play close to a great team!" To Alan Ball after he signed for Everton.

"The difference between Everton and the Queen Mary is that Everton carry more passengers!"

"When I've got nothing better to do, I look down the league table to see how Everton are getting along."