Bob Paisley

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Bob Paisley



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Current Club: N/A.

Previous Clubs: Liverpool, Bishop Auckland.

Loan Clubs: N/A.





International: N/A.

Trophies Won: English League Division 1946/47.





Paisley in his playing days was an aggressive (in his own words) but talented left-half, who had been rejected by his boyhood club Sunderland for being too small. They later attempted to sign him, but he had already given his word to Liverpool then.



Sadly for him the Second World War swallowed up a large portion of his career, he had to wait 6 years to make his official debut because of it! He was able to play in a number of games during the war years, once even cycling 30miles to the Mersey Tunnel, before hitching a ride the rest of the way, then returning in the same way.



Once he did begin to play for the team, Paisley quickly developed an almost telepathic partnership down the left with Liverpool's star man of the time, Billy Liddell. As Danny Blanchflower recalls: "My first match at Anfield was at right-back for Aston Villa. The roar from the Kop was awesome as Billy Liddell waltzed down the wing making us look like idiots. Then I began to recognise the source of Liddell's magic. He was Liverpool's inconspicious craftsman at left-half, Bob Paisley."



For all that he seemed a quiet, unassuming character, Paisley was a fighter, tenacious in the extreme and was not one to shy away from the physical side of the game. In those days before substitutes, he was once knocked unconscious 10minutes before half-time, but returned to the pitch 9minutes into the second half. To the horror of his father, who was in the crowd that day, Bob leaped to meet a Liddell cross and headed it goalwards, only to collapse unconscious once more.



Paisley was the force behind the throne as a player, as he would later become in his role as assistant to Bill Shankly. A man whose contribution was indisputably vital but went unheralded at the time.



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