by Ian Herbert
The line-up reflected the side’s rapidly changing face. Six of the starting XI – Grobbelaar, Lawrenson, Johnston, Whelan, Lee and Rush – had never collected a league championship medal. But that did not mitigate for the manner of defeat.
Thompson dallied with a clearance near the six-yard box, allowing Asa Hartford to steal the ball and score. Then a poor skied clearance by Thompson, which didn’t even leave the penalty area, was dropped by Grobbelaar in no man’s land and Thompson had to handle the ensuing shot over the bar for a penalty, which was converted.
Kevin Reeves produced a shot which Thompson should have blocked off before it beat the goalkeeper – ‘the sad figure of Grobbelaar’, as he was described on the BBC commentary – at the near post. It was Liverpool’s third home defeat of the season and it left the side 12th in the First Division.
John Bond did not pass up the chance for sanctimony when he paid a visit to the Boot Room that evening. Liverpool’s chances of taking the title had gone, he suggested. Paisley wasn’t present that day but he would have adopted the same approach to the comments as Moran, had he been. ‘Just wait and see,’ Moran told Bond as he left. ‘There’s half a season to go yet. We’ll see who’s top in May.’ He and Fagan seethed when the City people had gone.
‘The Empire is Crumbling’ declared an apocalyptic Daily Mirror after City’s first win at Anfield since 1953. The letters pages of the Liverpool Echo were filled with proclamations of how Paisley was sending Liverpool – the reigning European champions for the third time under his guidance – into terminal decline. ‘I never thought this would happen,’ stated one, penned from the village of Meols in suburban Wirral. ‘Liverpool built their reputation by careful planning, wise spending and total dedication at all levels. Above all, the word “pride” was emblazoned into everybody connected with Liverpool and was reflected in the never-say-die attitude. A new word has crept into the vocabulary: “apathy”.’ Another expressed ‘disgust at the attitude of Liverpool towards their supporters’.
‘Legend now burden’ was the Liverpool Daily Post’s headline beneath an assessment which included some melancholic reflections on what had come to pass: ‘The public has no stomach for the hero defeated by time. We prefer to hold them in the memory where they remain ageless. Those who knew Dean, Finney and Charlton remember them at their best. Those who followed Liverpool while they became the most successful institution English football has ever known are watching them still and that makes the disappointments that much harder to follow. There are no graceful retirements for football clubs.’
The manner of the Manchester City defeat required something that stripped the paint off the walls and Paisley knew his own limitations. Fagan wanted to speak. On the rare occasions Bob’s assistant raised his voice, there was a reaction. So Paisley accepted. ‘Say what you want,’ he said, and left. His assistant did not hold back. Phil Neal recalls every word of what was said as a furious Fagan picked off the offending players, one by one. Souness first: ‘You think you’re running midfield? You haven’t won a tackle for a month. You’re nowhere near anything.’ Then Dalglish: ‘How many goals have you got so far this season?’ Then Grobbelaar: ‘You look more like a ballerina. Come and collect the ball like you’re supposed to.’
The players had taken to meeting together, to discuss the problems, with Phil Thompson frequently declaring it was all his fault that a certain goal had been conceded. There had clearly been some scepticism in the Boot Room about the notion of the players analysing their problems to death instead of putting things right on the pitch. ‘The meetings must stop,’ Fagan fumed. ‘Now get out of here. We’ve talked enough.’
Grobbelaar was the one the defenders blamed. He felt some of the side were ‘stand-offish’ with him in the aftermath of the Manchester City defeat. Superficially at least, Paisley seemed to feel something different. He waited until the squad had gathered at 10 a.m. the following Friday to say his piece, preferring to let the dust settle. He surprised them by declaring that he absolved Grobbelaar from much of the blame by declaring that some of the moves which brought the goals should have been cut off before they reached the goalkeeper. But Paisley did tell Grobbelaar to cut out his handstands.
The strategy was clear. To have condemned the 24-year-old in front of the rest would have shattered his frayed confidence more. There were quieter, more clinical ways of dealing with him if things didn’t pick up. Paisley wasn’t done yet, though. He was preparing for his own contribution: a quiet and clinically brutal one.
The players were on the coach run down to Melwood, four days later, when Fagan approached Thompson, who was sitting halfway back with his usual partner McDermott. ‘The boss wants to see you in his office when we get back,’ he said.
Ray Kennedy, sensing something significant, declared that he knew what it would be about.
‘Tell me now if you know,’ said Thompson, irritated that Kennedy had information that he was happy to use to add to the intrigue.
‘I know who the new captain’s going to be,’ Kennedy replied.
‘Are you going to tell me, then?’ said Thompson, trying to retain face.
‘Graeme Souness,’ said Kennedy.
‘Now there’s a shock,’ said Thompson.
Thompson dispensed with any small-talk when he walked into Paisley’s office. As Thompson recalls it, Paisley’s words to him were: ‘I’m taking the captaincy off you for now.’ It was Paisley dissembling in the face of personal conflict again – sugar-coating an awkward conversation, because, in truth, he had no intention of ever restoring the captaincy. In the blur of emotion Thompson’s vivid memory is of Paisley suggesting he was ‘taking too much responsibility on your shoulders’.
‘You’re wrong. I don’t agree with you. But you’re the manager so I will have accept it,’ the player replied, though he struggled to extend the same magnanimity to the issue of who would be succeeding him. ‘It’s Graeme fucking Souness, isn’t it?’
Paisley mumbled something incomprehensible. ‘Aye, aye, just for now, see how it goes n’that,’ Thompson remembers him saying. The meeting was over.
Thompson’s indignation was something Paisley would have appreciated. ‘He was a man’s man. You could have a go back. I honestly believe me having a go back took me up a couple of notches. I think he wanted the response,’ he says. But there would be no reprieve. Thompson would never lead out his beloved home-town team again.
Paisley was planning changes to the team as well though he communicated the fact in his typically vague fashion. When Mark Lawrenson met the manager in the lift at the team hotel in Swansea – where the team played an FA Cup tie a week later – he was asked, ‘Can you play that left-sided one?’
‘What do you mean, boss? Left-back? Left-midfield?’ Lawrenson asked.
‘Aye, aye, that’s the one,’ Paisley replied.
Lawrenson remained none the wiser and neither was Ronnie Moran. ‘Where are you playing?’ he asked him ahead of kick-off. It transpired that Paisley had a left-midfield role in mind for Lawrenson, adding some muscularity which had been missing in the combination of Whelan and Sammy Lee against City.
It was Joe Fagan, not Paisley, who looked out for Thompson when Souness led the team out for the first time in the next game – an FA Cup tie against Swansea, with the deposed captain left to work out which was the least humiliating place to put himself in the line-up when the players ran out onto the pitch. (He decided to head out last.)
‘You have to make sure you do a great job,’ Fagan told Thompson.
‘You’ll get 100 per cent,’ Thompson replied. ‘When I’m out there Souness will get my backing but don’t ever tell me what to do when I’m off the pitch.’ The Swansea cup tie – a 4–0 win for Liverpool – was, by Thompson’s judgement, his best game of the season. Lawrenson was among the scorers.
Paisley explained his captaincy calculations to supporters in the match programme for Souness’s first home game as captain – against West Ham – and left little doub
t that it would be a permanent arrangement.
‘Phil told me he didn’t believe his job as a captain had bothered him but I believe it has,’ he wrote. ‘Phil accepted the decision like the true professional he is, saying, “If it’s for the best for me and for the team, that is all that matters.” I’m firmly convinced that Phil will benefit from the decision. Equally, I’m convinced that Graeme Souness will respond to the added responsibilities. He has the make-up to develop into a top-rate skipper.’
Just to sharpen the sense of loss for Thompson, the image on the front of the programme depicted him lifting the European Cup in Paris.
There was another casualty in the depths of that winter. Ray Kennedy left for Swansea in the January. And results began to turn. Liverpool won five matches in a row and though they then won two and lost two in the next four, a futher run of 11 consecutive wins followed. The two men who had knocked at Paisley’s door made very substantial contributions.
Ronnie Whelan was an instant hit. It was he who scored the consolation goal against City and, as the side began to rebuild their league campaign at the turn of the year, he scored in five out of six games. All the players began to feel the difference that he made. Ray Kennedy had never been the fastest of players and by 1981 that was beginning to show. It had meant that Rush had not been receiving the ball as rapidly as he might from Kennedy’s field of influence on the left. With Whelan’s arrival he, Dalglish and McDermott found themselves receiving possession more rapidly. Whelan’s greater mobility also meant that when an attack broke down Souness did not have as much ground to cover.
To Paisley’s supreme satisfaction, Rush and Whelan became a pair. They both scored freely after the turn of the year, as Liverpool won 20, drew three and lost two in 25 games – a performance which the three points for each win helped accelerate them to the summit of the league. They called Rush and Whelan ‘Tosh and Vitch’. Rush, naturally enough for a Welsh Liverpool striker, took the John Toshack moniker. Though it took him some time to add to his repertoire the headed goals which were a big part of Toshack’s game, he was the spear of the faster side that Paisley had built. The Whelan nickname was more complicated. He had a habit of saying ‘dust’ instead ‘just’ and so became known as ‘Dust’ and then ‘Dusty’. It was changed, depending on the foreign opposition. When Liverpool played in Eastern Europe Whelan would become ‘Dustovich’ or, in Holland, ‘Dustovan’. ‘Dustovich’ stuck and he became ‘the Vich’. Paisley found it all utterly unfathomable.
But as the newly emerging side worked at close quarters with Paisley that spring, they discovered what he knew. Before the home match against Ipswich in early February, he discussed Frans Thijssen. ‘Doin’s’, as Paisley described him, certainly not the hottest on foreign players’ names. ‘“Thijssen”, boss,’ Ronnie Moran interjected.
Paisley told them that when he received the ball, he always took it on the inside of his right foot. So whoever picked him up should not let him turn and receive it that way: ‘Come across him.’ He also told them that midway through the second half, Thijssen would take a rest for ten minutes because he runs out of steam. ‘So when you see him coasting, down the middle you go . . .’
And then there was the Ipswich keeper, Paisley added.
‘Cooper,’ offered Moran.
He was weak when balls were played in from his left between the six-yard line and the penalty spot. But his centre-halves didn’t protect him from those balls, so they were worth trying. Liverpool beat Ipswich 4–0 and went third, leaving Ipswich sixth.
The spring was not without its frustrations. Europe brought one of the visits behind the Iron Curtain which made Paisley so deeply suspicious – to CSKA Sofia of Bulgaria, where Liverpool exited controversially. An Ian Rush shot was judged not to have crossed the goal-line when it seemed to have done so, several penalty appeals were dismissed, as was Mark Lawrenson. Raucous Bulgarians were billeted outside the Liverpool hotel, making noise in the early hours. Having taken a slender lead to Sofia, Paisley’s players lost 2–0 and went out 2–1 on aggregate.
There was also an FA Cup defeat at Second Division Chelsea, which had Paisley returning home to tell Jessie that he’d had enough and was ‘packing it in’. She revealed this years later, but he clearly didn’t mean it. Peter Robinson never heard of any such threat.
It was Brian Clough’s Forest empire which was crumbling. In 1981–82 the club were on their way to a miserable 12th-place finish – fully 30 points beneath Liverpool – and were knocked out of the FA Cup by Wrexham of the Third Division. At Christmas, while Liverpool were changing captains and issuing verbal gunfire, Clough was taken into hospital with a suspected heart attack and Taylor faced the burden of managing the team alone for three weeks. It almost broke him. Their relationship became a personal feud between two men with competing egos, though the underlying problem was that Forest had overstretched themselves financially. Clough had insisted on a grand new Executive Stand, insisting he wanted his Forest to ‘play in a palace’. The repayments on that drained a club which, having slipped off the top, was also having to make do without European gate receipts, Wembley ticket sales and all the TV money that went along with them. In 1982 Forest were £2 million in the red and had to pay off the £2.5 million they had invested in the Executive Stand. It remained there in skeletal form, a ‘constant reminder that Forest had to play well to pay for it before the interest charges began to bite’, as the writer and former Nottingham Evening Post correspondent Duncan Hamilton wrote.
Liverpool’s practice of replacing one or two key players a season was something that Clough did not copy. Peter Shilton was one of the last of the great side to leave in 1983 because the club needed hard cash quickly. Peter Taylor left Forest to manage Derby County in 1982.
‘We were wrong,’ Clough told Hamilton in retrospect. ‘In fact we were so wrong I can’t believe it. We lost our sense of proportion and paid for it. We were too worried that some players might age too quickly. That was barmy. We never worried about age before. We’d only been concerned about talent. And I suppose we got too big-headed. We believed that everything we did was right.’
At Liverpool, where the term Big ’Ead was deliberately used on the first-team stars to guard against that kind of hubris, Paisley’s quiet instructions were the same as they’d been right back in 1974. Young trainee forward Paul Jewell, who would go on to manage in the top flight himself with Wigan Athletic, had just embarked on his task of cleaning a staff area one day, thinking the coaches had all left for the canteen, when he encountered the manager.
‘Who needs time on the ball, son?’ Paisley asked him.
Jewell was trying to get an answer out when Paisley provided it.
‘The one who’s going to receive it . . .’
It was the only time Jewell encountered Paisley one-to-one, but the second piece of advice he offered revealed that he and the Boot Room had the precise measure of him and his ability. ‘And by the way,’ Paisley added. ‘Get your shots in quicker.’
Liverpool were benefiting from Rush having taken that very advice. The Rush–Whelan axis took the club to a second successive League Cup win – 3–1 in extra-time against Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley. They both also took the headlines, with Whelan scoring twice and Rush finding the winner. Whelan had scored 14 goals in 10 games and Rush 30 in 17.
When Paisley briefly became the centre of attention on the coach home from a win at Notts County, he seemed momentarily overcome by the sense that this new young team was making it. It was the week of his 63rd birthday, a cake had been arranged, and the players demanded a speech, knowing how much he wouldn’t want to deliver one. Paisley picked the cake up and there was a tear in his eye as he spoke. ‘If you play like that every day it will be my birthday every day,’ he told them.
The only cause of disharmony was the usual one: players not being granted a precious place in Paisley’s starting line-up. An episode as the season reached is climax revealed how different the consequences were when the
disgruntled individual in question was Souness.
On the May Day Bank Holiday, the team were to play away to Tottenham Hotspur, Souness’s first club, against whom he was always desperate to appear and perform. But the captain had missed five consecutive games through injury, all of which Liverpool had won. Paisley himself had missed the last two, suffering from pleurisy – a condition causing stabbing pains to the stomach, which left him recuperating in bed at Bower Road.
Joe Fagan took charge in Paisley’s absence and it was he whom Souness approached ahead of the home game with Nottingham Forest on Saturday 1 May, to say he was fit to return. There was no way of accurately judging his match-readiness as Liverpool had not allowed Souness to run out for the reserves, fearing that an opponent would target him. Fagan told the captain he would rather hold him back for the match at White Hart Lane, 48 hours later. Souness duly told his teammates he would be playing in north London during Sunday’s journey south, but Fagan arrived at the player’s hotel-room door at the Swiss Cottage Holiday Inn, on the day of the match, to inform him – presumably a little tentatively – that he was retaining the same side for the 7.45 p.m. kick-off, with the captain again on the bench.
Souness was incandescent, and told Fagan what he might do with his team before shutting the door in his face, skipping the pre-match meal, showering and heading to the bar, where he promptly downed three gin and tonics and wrote out a transfer request.
It was then that Paisley, who had delayed his departure until the morning of the match owing to his recuperation, sauntered into the hotel lobby and spotted Souness at the bar.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked him.
‘You tell me,’ replied the captain, relating the morning’s events.
‘We’ll fucking see about that,’ Paisley declared, marching off towards Fagan. ‘We’ll see who’s boss.’ Two minutes later he returned to tell Souness: ‘You’re playing.’
