Liverpool in the 1960s

The Evolution of an Empire: Volume One reveals how Liverpool rose from Second Division stagnation to build English football’s answer to the Roman Empire. Just how did Bill Shankly remould the club’s DNA and assemble his first two great teams? Centring on 1960s Anfield, this book leaves no stone unturned.

A proud football club with five league titles to its name and twice FA Cup finalists, Liverpool had been marooned in the Second Division for five and a half years. In November 1959, the gloom deepened when manager Phil Taylor resigned. Initially linked with Matt Busby’s number two, Jimmy Murphy, Liverpool soon identified Bill Shankly as the man to set the club straight and lead it back to the First Division. Yet chairman T.V. Williams could scarcely have envisaged the empire the former Carlisle United, Grimsby Town, Workington and Huddersfield Town manager would go on to build. Transforming the Reds’ entire ethos, Shankly wrote a new visionary set of scriptures on how to play the game and how to act on Liverpool FC’s behalf – all rooted in simplicity – creating English football’s own version of the Totaalvoetbal phenomenon to come. From biff-and-bash football to pass and move, amid an ocean of tactical change sweeping the sport in the 1960s, this gripping book charts the rise and relentless roll of the Liverpool way.