Klopp put Liverpool back on its pedestal and fully reformed the club

Fifty years ago next summer, a young Granada TV reporter called Tony Wilson walked the streets of Liverpool with his microphone, breaking shocking news to men, women and children. The expressions on their faces made it clear it was news that they desperately did not want to hear.

Wilson, who went on to become a figure of great cultural significance in the north west as the co-founder of Factory Records, had come straight from Anfield where the Liverpool chairman John Smith had held a press conference to tell the world Bill Shankly had retired.

Shankly was a god on Merseyside, the father of the modern club, a manager who had taken Liverpool from the Second Division to the league title and FA Cup glories, a demagogue, a leader, a man who craved fraternity with the fans, a man with many of the qualities replicated now in Jurgen Klopp.

The footage shows Wilson standing with some supporters on a street corner near Lime Street Station on July 12, 1974, telling them that Shankly had quit. The camera captures the looks of disbelief on their faces. Another interview shows Wilson talking to a lad of maybe 12 or 13.

‘You’re having me on, aren’t you?’, the lad says to Wilson, accusingly.

‘No, I’m not having you on. I’ve just been to Anfield, honest.’

‘Who said?’ the kid asks, grasping for hope that someone might have made it up, looking as if he might be about to cry.

‘He said,’ Wilson tells him. ‘He just announced it at lunchtime today and the board were with him.’

The boy closes his eyes, as the reality starts to dawn on him. So it was true. The man who meant everything to Liverpool fans, the man who built the club, was leaving them. Making the decision, Shankly said later, was ‘like going to the electric chair’.

It was the same when