He laid foundations on which his successors Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan were able to build by winning seven league titles and four European Cups in the ten seasons after Shankly retired in 1974.

Shankly announced his surprise retirement from football a few weeks after Liverpool had won the 1974 FA Cup Final, having managed the club for 15 years, and was succeeded by his long-time assistant Bob Paisley.

[23] In his autobiography, he described the life of a miner at some length and mentioned many of the problems such as the sheer hard work, rats, the difficulties of eating and drinking at the coal face.

[26] Shankly's village team was called the Glenbuck Cherrypickers, a name probably derived from the 11th Hussars (the "Cherry Pickers"), but he said the club was near extinction when he had a trial and he never actually played for them.

[28] Although Shankly had less than one full season at Cronberry, he acknowledged his debt to Scottish Junior Football as he learned a lot, mainly by listening to older players and especially his brothers.

[49] Shankly was a qualified masseur and had decided he wanted to become a coach so, when Carlisle United asked him to become their manager in March of that year, he retired as a player and accepted the job.

[55] He spoke of his "unbelievable pride" when playing for Scotland against England and how, when confronted by the "Auld Enemy", the Scottish players would become William Wallace or Robert the Bruce for 90 minutes after pulling on the blue jersey.

He was an early exponent of the long throw-in – he practised by throwing balls over a row of houses and the small boys of the village helped by fetching them back for him.

[51] Shankly summed up the essential criteria for success in football management when he claimed he could speak common sense about the game and could spot a good player.

[66] Season ticket sales in 1950–51 reached an all-time high and Carlisle challenged strongly for promotion as well as achieving a draw with Arsenal at Highbury in the FA Cup.

He was reluctant to promote some promising reserves because of loyalty to the older players (a fault that was to resurface at Liverpool years later) and he finally resigned in January 1954, citing the board's lack of ambition as his main reason.

[80] Other players in Shankly's Huddersfield team were Ken Taylor, who was an England Test cricketer; striker Les Massie and captain Bill McGarry.

[83] Disillusioned by a board that wanted to sell his best players without offering money to buy replacements, Shankly felt stifled by Huddersfield's lack of ambition and was delighted in November 1959 to receive an approach for his services by Liverpool.

[89] He quickly established working relationships with the coaching staff of Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Reuben Bennett who shared his views about loyalty to each other and to the club.

Small-sided games, proper warm-up and cool-down periods, periodised technical workouts, circuit training and segmentation practices created a standard that would eventually come to be known as 'The Liverpool Way'.

[97] According to Kelly, Liverpool's eventual success was based on hard work done in the training system that Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Bennett introduced at Melwood.

Other players developed at Anfield were Jimmy Melia, Ronnie Moran, Alan A'Court and the future England internationals Gerry Byrne and Roger Hunt.

[122] In the 1964–65 Football League Championship, Liverpool dropped from first to seventh with 13 fewer points than the previous season, perhaps due to the exertion of lengthy participation in the FA and European Cups.

[122] Liverpool's performance in the 1966–67 European Cup was poor and, after struggling to overcome FC Petrolul Ploiești in the first round, they were well beaten in the last 16 by Ajax Amsterdam, inspired by 19-year-old Johan Cruyff.

[127] He wrote that bad luck and injuries disrupted the progress of two other prospects Alf Arrowsmith and Gordon Wallace; Shankly had compared the latter to Tom Finney.

[132] Adding the new players to Tommy Smith, Ian Callaghan, Chris Lawler and Emlyn Hughes, Shankly formed the nucleus of a second great team which went on to dominate English and European football in the 1970s.

[159] In the third round of the FA Cup, Liverpool had to score a late equaliser to draw 2–2 at home against lowly Doncaster Rovers but recovered to win the replay and then go all the way to the final.

[172] Shankly was 60 when Liverpool won the 1974 FA Cup final and said in his autobiography that, on returning to the dressing room at the end of the match, he felt tired from all the years.

I would like to at this stage place on record the board's great appreciation of Mr Shankly's magnificent achievements over the period of his managership.Shankly soon regretted his decision and tried to continue his involvement with the club, mainly by turning up for team training at Melwood.

In any event, their perceived ruthlessness was vindicated by the unprecedented haul of League Championship titles and European Cups won over the next decade[176] under Bob Paisley[183] and Joe Fagan.

He worked for Radio City 96.7, a Liverpool station on which he presented his own chat show, once interviewing prime minister Harold Wilson, and was a pundit on its football coverage.

In November 1976, the press speculated that Shankly would make a return to management as the successor to Dave Mackay at Derby County, but the position went to Colin Murphy instead.

[190] On 3 October, Liverpool's first home league game since his passing, Anfield celebrated his life, with one fan on the Kop holding aloft a homemade banner declaring "Shankly Lives Forever".

[207] One non-football activity that Shankly did enjoy was playing cards and Ian St John said he loved it, always taking part on long coach trips to away matches.

"[95] In his autobiography, Shankly gave insights into his character such as his world-view as a socialist, explaining that the socialism he believed in was not about politics but about collectivism, with everyone working for each other and enjoying a share of the rewards.