Quiet Genius

by Ian Herbert

  The 2–0 defeat in Poland was followed by a challenging return home leg, which became even more difficult when Kenny Dalglish dropped out so late, through illness, that Paisley was a substitute short. The visitors led 2–1 with ten minutes to play and though there was the usual lack of panic from Liverpool, who played their passing game and won through late goals by Rush and Hodgson, it was too late.

  There would be no FA Cup success, either. A Brighton side with Jimmy Case in its ranks put paid to those hopes. The 1977 final against Manchester United would be the closest Paisley ever got to the one prize which always eluded him.

  It was the League Cup which afforded Paisley a Wembley valediction. 1982–83 was the competition’s second year under the sponsorship of the Milk Marketing Board, and Liverpool and Manchester United contested the final of the Milk Cup. Paisley was by no means overwhelmed by any sentiment attached to his last journey to what chairman John Smith had described as ‘Anfield South’ over the years. He and Ron Atkinson, the United manager, were linked up for a three-way phone interview with the presenter of BBC Radio’s Sport on Four at 8 a.m. on the morning of the final.

  ‘Good morning, Bob. How are you feeling at this time of day?’ Atkinson inquired.

  ‘I’m OK, Ron,’ Paisley replied. ‘I’ve just got out of bed. But I suppose you have just got indoors.’

  The game’s flashpoint came when Bruce Grobbelaar dashed 35 yards out to halt the advance of United’s Gordon McQueen, which upended the centre-half. Grobbelaar’s tendency to experience a rush of blood had receded, though United felt he should have been dismissed. He was not and Liverpool won the game the way they had so many Cup ties under Paisley.

  Phil Thompson, who missed the game through injury, described Liverpool’s passing across the turf as akin to ‘water dripping on a stone’ and the newspapers saw it that way too. The Daily Mirror’s Frank McGhee wrote of ‘the patience this team have learned over the years’. Souness, Whelan, Lee and Johnston were ‘faultless’ he said.

  Norman Whiteside scored early for United but Liverpool’s patience paid off when the indefatigable Alan Kennedy – as effective as ever in a game’s closing stages with the ball at his feet – equalised 15 minutes from time. In extra-time, it was no contest. Ronnie Whelan, who had developed over two years into a player of vision, fine distribution and goals, bent in the winner. Paisley loved the way Whelan could play equally well with both feet.

  The scenes on the pitch were much as they always were after Liverpool had won a trophy: euphoric players congratulating each other while Paisley padded around unobtrusively in their midst. An aspect of the celebrations was different this time, though. It would be Paisley’s last appearance as manager at a stadium in which he had never climbed the steps to lift a trophy, and Souness quietly suggested to him in the moment that he might wish to lead the team up. ‘I didn’t need to ask twice,’ Souness related much later.

  Paisley left his cap behind, so his hair whipped up eccentrically in the wind as he clambered up the staircase, 33 years after watching from the stands as his teammates did so in the 1950 final from which he was excluded. He was perhaps five steps from the top when a scarf was draped across his left shoulder. That was when he laughed. It balanced there precariously as he reached the top, took the trophy and raised it aloft. It was when the players had descended that Souness, rather more familiar with this business, beckoned Paisley to join in the team group.

  The image preserves his last triumph in perpetuity. Paisley stands at the edge of the group – top left, just as in those Liverpool team groups in the 1940s – and there could be no doubt now that this team, who had swept all domestic opposition aside since the New Year of 1981, were anything but his own. Only Fairclough – by now a bit-part player, who’d scored twice in a league match against Manchester City and still been on the bench for the next game – remains from the squad he inherited. It is striking how young so many of them in that team picture still look: Rush and Whelan were both 21, Johnston 22, Lee 24 and Grobbelaar 25. All still had so much spooling out ahead of them. Paisley placed a hand on the head of the player crouching in front of him, the one most akin to him – Alan Kennedy, the man still proving that the most important players are not necessarily the most technically proficient. For many, he had been Liverpool’s man of the match once again that day. The players were singing a triumphal song, though Paisley did not join in. He just stood there straight-backed, a small man in a grey suit, light brown shirt and diagonal-stripe tie, still clutching the scarf that had been pressed into his hand. The fans were singing the players’ names, so the group parted ways. The players went in their direction. Paisley went in his.

  It was on a post-season trip to Tel Aviv, where Liverpool were scheduled to play one of their regular friendlies with the Israeli national team, that Souness handed Paisley a carriage clock engraved with the words ‘To Bob, from all the lads’, though more chaos preceded the occasion.

  The players’ El Al flight out of Heathrow was scheduled for the night after the season’s last league game, a 2–1 defeat at runners-up Watford, and the drinking started early – not least because Elton John, Watford’s owner, encountered some of the squad at the airport and saw to it that they were treated to executive-class hospitality. A heavy drinking session was followed by a free day on the Sunday spent drinking in Tel Aviv’s sun-baked main square, ahead of an appointed 5 p.m. rendezvous at the hotel. The players were worse for wear and some were better at handling it than others. A fight ensued between the players which left David Hodgson running to the team hotel for help to break it up and saw Alan Kennedy emerge with a black eye. The next day, Monday 16 May 1983, there was a presentation ceremony for the manager as a prelude to a 4–3 defeat at the Ramat Gan Stadium before 38,000 people which constituted Paisley’s last 90 minutes at the helm.

  ‘Have you been fighting?’ Paisley asked Kennedy, who did not pretend to deny it.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ continued the manager. ‘What gets into you?’

  It didn’t affect a ceremony which was evidently touching in its informality. ‘There were tears in his eyes when we handed the clock across and that was unusual for him,’ recalls Mark Lawrenson. ‘The present we gave him could not have been more predictable but it didn’t matter. He seemed to like it more because of that.’

  14

  Afterwards

  It was not easy to let go. The customary way for Bob Paisley to have stepped away would have been to have gathered his possessions – the gold carriage clock; the go-backwards clock; the photographs from his office – and begin to enjoy the life with Jessie that they had never had.

  When Liverpool headed off for another gruelling post-season tour to Bangkok in the summer of 1983, it was suddenly Joe Fagan’s territory. Fagan was the manager. Yet Paisley went along, too, chewing the fat with Graeme Souness and worrying about some of the financial details which really were none of his business.

  The tour included a match sponsored by Seiko, who had put up $50,000 prize money for the winners. Liverpool’s opponents were a Seiko XI which included a number of guest celebrity players, including Pat Jennings and Alan Sunderland, who were by then entering the twilight of their careers at Arsenal.

  It was Souness, as captain, who collected the cheque and, having left the stadium quickly, found a bank to cash it before giving the players an equal share. Two young players had done well that day. Robbie Savage (no relation to the Welshman of the same name who would pass through Manchester United’s academy) scored a volley which flew into the top corner of the net, and Steve Foley had also acquitted himself favourably. Souness wanted to ensure that they both got their winnings, though Paisley spotted him distributing their shares in cash and marched up.

  ‘Where’s the cheque?’ asked Paisley, whose entire managerial career had involved helping the club on the commercial side. ‘That’s the club’s money?’ ‘Upstairs’ would not be happy.

  However good their relationship, Souness was not handing it over. He appr
oached the Seiko representative to ask who the money was for. It was the captain who got the answer he wanted, rather than the former manager. ‘The team’ came the reply, and that was good enough for everyone to head off and buy presents to take home. Paisley was furious.

  As he held onto the club which he once said had been a ‘drug’ for him, his authority would be increasingly challenged and his apparent value diminish. Paisley was subtler than Shankly in the way he stayed about the place, and no one was unhappy to find him there, yet there are echoes of his predecessor’s futile attempt to remain near the centre once he had gone.

  It was reported that Brian Clough, Southampton’s Lawrie McMenemy and Malcolm Allison, then at Middlesbrough, had all invited Paisley to take a look at their players and systems at close quarters and tell them what he had seen. ‘If I spot something different then I’ll be at liberty to offer them my opinions. I’ll probably take them up on their kind offers,’ he said. It was a diplomatic answer. He would never advise those whom Liverpool would be up against.

  Fagan was happy to have Paisley still on the scene, and that included his old friend being present in the half-time dressing-room to offer occasional wisdom. Paisley would also be on the team bus for away games, though generally not in the same seat beside Fagan. No one took up the seat next to Paisley on the coach to London for a League Cup third round second replay in November 1983 at Fulham, three months into Fagan’s first season. So it fell upon the Daily Post reporter Ian Ross – the local paper was still allocated a seat on the team coach for midweek away trips – to sit beside the old boss, as there were no other seats left.

  Paisley was wearing odd socks, Ross noticed. With a three-hour journey ahead he decided he would attempt to strike up some conversation. But it was an unsuccessful venture. Paisley was as poor a conversationalist as ever with those he did not know well. To Ross he looked a marginal figure now.

  It was only when the bus was pulling away in the direction of home, through the streets of London, that Paisley leapt up and shouted towards the driver. ‘John,’ he said, gesturing. ‘That chippie there. That’ll do us.’ When the bus had pulled to the side of the road he issued instructions for 24 packets of cod and chips, with Ross included. The occupants of the bus fell silent as it pulled away again and they consumed the contents of their fish wrappers. Ross caught a glimpse of Paisley munching through his own fish supper, looking the soul of contentment.

  The old routines were only maintained for a few more years. Though Paisley saw the side collect the 1984 European Cup in Rome, Fagan had gone by the following summer. The players who tuned into English television stations at their hotel in Brussels before the 1985 European Cup final – where Liverpool aimed to join the select group to claim that trophy five times and keep it – heard reports that Fagan would step down after the game. Nothing was mentioned at the training session which ensued. It was at a team meeting Fagan called, following lunch, that he told them, ‘After tonight you can call me Joe.’

  Fagan was only two years younger than Paisley, though that night at Heysel – one of Liverpool’s darkest – aged him visibly. Liverpool fans breached a fence separating rival supporters and charged Juventus supporters, whose retreat towards a retaining wall in the Belgian stadium caused it to collapse, killing 39. The final went ahead anyway, as it was felt that further clashes would occur, and Liverpool lost 1–0.

  The images of Fagan being helped across the runway at Liverpool’s Speke airport after the team had returned from Brussels revealed a broken man – shattered by the tragedy. Yet the less publicised factor for his disinclination to go on was one that Paisley knew all about: the difficulty of dealing with disgruntled players knocking on his door to ask why they had not been picked. He confided in Robinson the dreadful struggle he was having with that.

  Paisley’s part in the commemorations that followed Heysel revealed again how far he had travelled. He assuredly read the first lesson at the Metropolitan Cathedral Mass held to mourn those lost – Isaiah 25 verses 6 to 9, ‘the prophet’s vision of external blessedness’.

  There was no new manager stepping up from the Boot Room when Fagan walked away. Kenny Dalglish took over and for a time it seemed that this would presage a more significant role for Paisley again. The Liverpool board, concerned that the responsibility of playing and managing would be onerous for the 34-year-old, asked Paisley to return as ‘adviser’ to the Scotsman.

  It had been two years since he had stepped down and he did not need any persuading to take the role, which seemed to be a significant one. Paisley sat next to Dalglish in the official team photograph for the 1985–86 season, though Daily Post photographer Stephen Shakeshaft, who was there that day, said the 66-year-old had been initially reluctant to be in the frame.

  Almost from the start Dalglish – not unreasonably – wanted to do things his own way. The assuredness he’d always shown about how Liverpool should play was something Paisley had cherished in him, and that had never changed. It meant that Dalglish didn’t much want anyone telling him what he might do.

  Initially retaining most of the side Fagan had bequeathed him, Dalglish eclipsed both Shankly and Paisley by winning the First Division and FA Cup Double in 1985–6. The elder statesman continued to watch from the stand. He would see things he felt were wrong and head down to the dugout, as he always had, to point out changes that might be made. But he experienced the sense of what it is to be yesterday’s man. His suggestions were not always appreciated in the Saturday afternoon mêlée of trying to ensure the Liverpool team won.

  ‘Bob’s appointment made sense,’ says Roy Evans, who was on the bench with Dalglish. ‘Kenny was inexperienced and Bob had all the knowledge, but there were little teething problems.’ On those trips down to the dugout to offer a suggestion or two, Evans remembers, ‘He was told to fuck off on more than one occasion. Basically, we’d all be in there trying to sort things out and the last thing we needed was someone else sticking their oar in or telling us what we already knew. We had no problems with him talking things over on the Monday at Melwood or whatever, and Kenny and everyone else had total respect for him. But on match days he needed to take a step back, as that’s what this new advisory role was all about.’

  There were no sacred cows and that was the way Paisley had always wanted it. Apart from spending the night at the team hotel before games on Fridays, he did not do much. It was Tom Saunders – the man bestowed on Paisley 21 years earlier – whom Dalglish found to be extremely useful, just as Paisley always had. He and Saunders became very close and – with precise echoes of what had evolved in the autumn of 1974 – Dalglish was keen to have Saunders in his own office.

  When a journalist expressed surprise to find Saunders there one day, the former head teacher told him that Dalglish wanted him around to answer the telephone, because an empty office with no one to answer the calls might mean a transfer opportunity missed.

  But Saunders’s part in the transfer side of the business remained more significant than that. He and Dalglish often headed off to watch players together and when Saunders put it to Fagan’s successor that the club were missing out on the lower league players they once signed and might perhaps watch some midweek matches together, he agreed. This suggestion saw them look at several players together. Saunders was still influential in 1991, when he played a part in the purchase of full-back Rob Jones from Crewe, when Graeme Souness was manager.

  Saunders, needless to say, rejected the idea he was some kind of adviser. ‘No, I never offer any kind of advice,’ he said. ‘I never say, “Why don’t you do this?” because people don’t like that. I take messages and [Dalglish] will sometimes say to me, “Oh, what do you think about this?” And I’ll say to him, “It’s up to you, boss, but you might have seen that maybe he doesn’t play well when we’re playing away, or he’s a bit left-sided.” Or, “I think he may have got domestic troubles.”’ Those were precisely the kind of observations that Paisley would have made.

  The games – any ga
mes – still absorbed Paisley. His son-in-law Ian McMahon ran the Derby School boys team, and when they played against Manchester Boys Paisley turned up. McMahon saw him before the game began and was naturally looking for any fragments of insight his father-in-law might have to impart. ‘Are they your best XI?’ Paisley wanted to know. ‘Then just let them play.’

  Derby were 1-0 up and had won a corner which most of the team advanced upfield for with seconds left, only to leave themselves exposed to a counter-attack at the death, from which Manchester scored. McMahon knew it had been a tactical mistake. ‘What do you reckon, then?’ Paisley asked the boys in the dressing-room at the end. He let them provide the answer.

  There always seemed to be time to give for those he considered his own. One weekend, when McMahon’s amateur team played against the Quarry Bank Old Boys, a Liverpool team who played close to the Paisley family home, Paisley gave the players a tour of Anfield and found some antiseptic powder for a knee injury his son-in-law was carrying.

  But heaven help outsiders who might question his club. Young Daily Post journalist Chris Eakin was despatched to Anfield one day to ‘doorstep’ the management about claims that a young group of Juventus fans had arrived in an official capacity to see Anfield and remember those who had died in the Heysel Disaster. The fans said they had been afforded no welcome at Anfield and were refused access to the pitch but were treated more graciously when they walked down to Goodison Park.

  Paisley was on the steps of a coach which was about to take the team out of Anfield when Eakin spotted him, but the ex-manager snapped at the reporter when approached. ‘What do you expect us to do?’ he asked Eakin, in an answer devoid of spin or sensitivity.

  With his football involvement peripheral, Paisley threw himself into an extraordinary number of public appearances – guided and prompted on many occasions by Jessie. As proud of him as always, she carefully cut out articles chronicling his appearances in the most obscure publications – from the Liverpool’s weekly free-sheet Merseymart to the Coal News. She stuck them into scrapbooks which, ever the teacher, she mounted with yellow paper and sometimes decorated with an image of her husband. Bob’s Scrapbook Number 7 and Bob’s Scrapbook Number 8 cover these later years: the official opening of a new Liverpool Talking Newspaper studio; the national police 5-a-side football finals; the dedication of local churches; a Boys’ Brigade march-past at which Paisley took the salute; the opening of Batley’s Wholesale Market, at which Jessie snipped the tape; the Liverpool Prison football tournament. These all featured on the list of appearances.