Red Men Reborn!

John Williams

Description

Red Men Reborn takes a unique look at the entire history and socio-cultural significance of Liverpool FC, from the club's foundation in 1892 to the present day. John Williams skilfully weaves his narrative around the great managers - from Tom Watson to Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and Kenny Dalglish, Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez, then finally the current epic era of Jurgen Klopp. The book shines a spotlight on the post-2010 period when the club was faced with an ownership crisis and possible extinction. Since then, new American owners, FSG, and Klopp have together presided over a period of extraordinary success at home, in Europe and globally. Red Men Reborn examines how this remarkable turnaround happened by analysing Klopp, his wider influences and his key recruitment and coaching strategies. Williams has been present at most of the major Liverpool finals and key matches since the late 1970s, and his treatment includes an analysis of the lasting impact of the Hillsborough and Heysel disasters on the club and its supporters.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 05 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801503068
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
John Williams, 2022
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Print ISBN 9781801501507
eBook ISBN 9781801503068
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Contents
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: The Impossible Quadruple: The extraordinary 2021/22 season
Chapter 2: Before Bill Shankly: Some deep history of Liverpool Football Club
Chapter 3: Among Folks of My Own Kind : Bill Shankly and the new Liverpool
Chapter 4: A Brave New World: The FA Cup, Europe and Bill Shankly s gap years
Chapter 5: The Blessed Boot Room: From Shankly to Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan - in one difficult step
Chapter 6: Into the Darkness: Heysel, Hillsborough and into recovery
Chapter 7: The Return of the Boot Room: Negotiating the Premier League future through the past
Chapter 8: Allez les Rouges: The new Continental technocrats
Chapter 9: American Pie: The Liverpool ownership crisis, 2007-2010
Chapter 10: King Kenny to the Rescue (Once Again): Or what FSG learned about running a top-flight English club
Chapter 11: Lucho and the Man with the Silver Shovel: How Luis Su rez and Brendan Rodgers almost wowed the Kop
Chapter 12: The Age of the Gegenpress: The time of J rgen Klopp
Chapter 13: Oh, Happy Days: Madrid 2019 and the Premier League title, at last
Chapter 14: The Season that Never Was: Stumbling into a pandemic and a crisis
Chapter 15: On the Shoulders of Giants: J rgen Klopp and his Liverpool legacy
Sources
Photos
Dedication
For Alison F, a Red, and also for Ryan, a young Kopite lost far too early, but not forgotten.
For Sheila Spiers, who would have celebrated the title in 2020 as wildly as any great Liverpool fan.
We miss you all.
Introduction and Acknowledgements
THIS COMPLETELY revised version of the original Red Men took shape during the various lockdowns for the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022. I want to thank all those who have been writing, texting and emailing me, waiting patiently for it to be born. I apologise for the delay. But I make no apologies for producing another substantial book: it is needed to tell a big story and I hope readers of the original text will find much that is rewarding in this very different version. The new ownership situation and the current era of the club under J rgen Klopp, including the recent European and domestic successes, the ending of 30 years of league title drought in 2020 and the amazing campaign of 2021/22 certainly merit a new, up-to-date account of the Liverpool FC journey.
I wrote the original version of Red Men soon after the city of Liverpool had proved a spectacularly successful 2008 European Capital of Culture. At that time, this seemed to me to be a fine reason to publish a cultural history of Liverpool Football Club. I wrote then that there was no doubt that football is as much a feature of the cultural heritage and artistic landscape of the city of Liverpool as any film, theatre production, media installation or art exhibition. I still believe that today, perhaps even more so. The year 2010 when Red Men was published was also the very moment that Liverpool FC faced an ownership crisis that was resolved only in the High Court. There is a serious discussion to be had here, of course, about the global corporate ownership of great local communal sporting institutions, which I try briefly to address later in this book. The Liverpool club survived in 2010 and has since prospered in the hands of Fenway Sports Group (FSG) and its coach J rgen Klopp.
However, in 2020, at the very moment that Liverpool FC were in sight of their first league title for 30 years, the entire world was engulfed in crisis as Covid-19 swept around the globe, ravaging families and neighbourhoods and closing down schools, stores, sports venues and football leagues. It even raised questions about if, and when, any of us might be able to attend a professional match again. Football eventually did return, of course, as it had done after two world wars. But initially it came back neutered, without fans. How its future might look then, nobody yet quite knew.
That Liverpool FC in 2022 under J rgen Klopp are back among the game s elite once more, there is no question. In fact, it is of little surprise that so many commentators today talk about Klopp in the same way they once discussed the great Scottish manager at Anfield, Bill Shankly. Shanks took over an ailing Liverpool in December 1959, languishing in the Second Division of the Football League. Within five years he had revamped the whole idea of what a football manager can and should be in a city such as Liverpool. Shankly won league titles, European honours and the club s first FA Cup, in 1965, after 73 years of longing. He became a much-loved national public figure. J rgen Klopp inherited a club in mid-table in the top flight and 25 years from its last English league title. In fewer than five years he had brought home the Champions League trophy, the FIFA World Club Cup and the Premier League title. He had also changed minds about emotional football management in an era largely dominated by more clinical Continental technocrats. The comparison with Shankly, therefore, is not entirely a specious one.
In this new book, covering mainly the club s post-war history, I look in detail again at Shankly and Paisley, Houllier and Benitez, but also at all four managers who sometimes toiled but also blossomed at Anfield since the original Red Men was published more than a decade ago. At that time, Liverpool FC was facing an existential threat, more than it did a possible resurrection. Much of the groundwork for the early part of this book, now covered much more briefly in Chapter One, was undertaken at the Liverpool Central Library by my researcher, David Gould, and I want to thank him again, and also the local staff in Liverpool, for looking after us so well during our many visits there between 2006 and 2008, as well as on my recent return.
My good friends and confidants, the late Andrew Ward, Stephen Hopkins, Neil Carter, Chris Gladman, Phil Breen, Riaz Rivat, Sylvia Williams and Alec McAulay, all read early versions of some of these chapters and offered useful comments and scholarly support. Riaz was trying to get the best out of Liverpool FC s Equality and Diversity Fan Forum. He deserves our support. We all look forward to seeing one day on stage Phil Breen s much-delayed play about the unimpeachable Bill Shankly. I also want to repeat here my thanks to the historian Stephen Done at Liverpool FC for offering many priceless correctives and pieces of sound guidance and advice on the early pre-Shankly period. For Red Men , Stephen allowed me to look at the surviving official Liverpool FC Minute Books (1914-1956), for which I remain hugely grateful.
Over the past ten years or so, countless websites and excellent fan podcasts have begun to challenge some published sources. Most recently, The Anfield Wrap podcasts have been provocative, informative and hugely enjoyable. Arnie Balderursson and Gudmundor Magnusson have done a great job of writing and data collection in Liverpool: The Complete Record . Vital, too, is the website lfchistory.net for providing important historical information about the club s past fixtures, journalistic reflections and Liverpool s past players and managers. Finally, John Belchem s edited collection of Liverpool life, Liverpool 800: Culture, Character and History , gave me plenty of general material to contemplate on history, culture and social change in the city.
After 1990 the Reds came close a few times to winning the league title again: 2002, 2009 and, of course, 2014. But I have had both to endure and enjoy the 5,000/1 triumph of so-called nohopers Leicester City as they took the Premier League crown in 2016 in the most unexpected fashion. My stepdaughter Zelda and stepson Seb have always kept the Liverpool faith, joined recently by my youngest granddaughter, Clemency. I have had less success with Millie, Sasha and Esm e. Although I am originally from Bootle and remain an Anfield season ticket holder, I now live in Leicester and my close family today are mainly Leicester City fans, including my wife, Sylvia. My son-in-law Adam, however, is a devoted Coventry City fan. Our family events are infused with talk about the game. Because of J rgen Klopp s brilliance between 2015 and 2022 and because of the skill and commitment of this latest outstanding crop of Liverpool players that he recruited to win the Premier League title in 2020, at least I can now finally look my wife and all my Leicester-based family squarely in the eye once more. Praise be.
Back in the 1980s, at the high point of Liverpool s successes, it was still difficult to envisage that the club record home crowd of 61,905, for an FA Cup tie versus Wolves in 1952 could ever be challenged. But in June 2021 FSG announced plans for the expansion of the Anfield Road end to bring the envisaged new stadium capacity back to 61,000. It confirmed a new golden age for the English game and for Liverpool FC under J rgen Klopp. (If only access to the st