ReviewBill Shankly's final season: The champions begin with a mixed August

We’re marking the occasion with a deep dive into each month of 1973-74, taking a closer look at the matches and players from a season that ended in the most seismic and unexpected fashion when Shankly announced his retirement.

Our trip down memory lane begins in August 1973…

It had been a long road back to the top for Liverpool.

After six seasons without a trophy, the Reds followed up their league title win from 1965-66 by reclaiming the crown in 1972-73.

The silverware drought was ended in style as they also won the UEFA Cup: a significant moment in Liverpool’s history as it was their first trophy in European football.

The seven years between major honours had hardly been a bad period for the club. The Reds did not finish below fifth in the league and reached the FA Cup final in 1971. Shankly would have been motivated toward reclaiming former glories by one of his famous quotes, though.

“If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.”

Arguably more painful than the lack of trophies was the need to break up his first great side, the heroes of the 1960s who had earned promotion from Division Two then won a pair of league titles and the club’s first FA Cup.

By 1973, a difficult but ultimately successful evolution had occurred. There were still players like Ian Callaghan, Chris Lawler and Tommy Smith, who straddled both eras, in the team.

But legends such as Tommy Lawrence, Ron Yeats, Roger Hunt and Ian St John had been replaced. Ray Clemence and Kevin Keegan joined from Scunthorpe, John Toshack left Cardiff City for Anfield while Steve Heighway (from amateur football) and Phil Thompson (through the youth team) had taken their first steps in the professional game with the Reds in the early 1970s.

These days were long before ‘squad rotation’, a term with which we’re familiar now. Liverpool played 66 matches in 1972-73 and eight players had featured in at least 59 of them (with Callaghan, Lawler and Larry Lloyd ever-present).

In this light, it’s unsurprising there was little in the way of transfer activity in the summer of 1973. Most of Shankly’s rebuild had already taken place and his new-look Reds had proven successful.

There were a couple of additions, though. Teenager Jimmy Case arrived from semi-professional side South Liverpool in May, but although he would go on to enjoy tremendous success at Liverpool, he didn’t make his debut until almost two years later under Bob Paisley.

Readier for the senior team was Alan Waddle, cousin of future England international Chris. He was signed from Halifax Town in 1973 for £40,000 and, after waiting a while for his first appearance, would write his name into Merseyside derby history later in the campaign.

Pre-season programmes were much shorter in the 1970s than they are today. Liverpool warmed up for the defence of their Division One title and first European Cup campaign in seven years with just two friendlies.

They began on August 14 with a game against Hertha BSC at Berlin’s Olympiastadion. The match report by Jim Mansell of the Liverpool Echo told of the impact made by Heighway.

In his words, the Reds’ winger ‘scored a spectacular goal in which he beat three defenders’ as part of a run that started near the halfway line. Shankly’s side later conceded an equaliser and the game ended 1-1, though Mansell wrote that Liverpool could be satisfied with their performance.

Three days later, the Reds were in Belgium taking on Anderlecht. Neither side could make the breakthrough, however, and the match finished goalless. Both teams did at least have a couple of decent opportunities, with Liverpool unfortunate to hit the post twice, thanks to efforts from Lawler and Toshack.

The latter was the only member of the starting XI against Anderlecht who did not retain his place for the opening league game of 1973-74, against Stoke City at Anfield, with local lad Phil Boersma taking his spot.

As in Berlin, Heighway was the hero once again. The Reds can rarely have scored so early into a new season either.

Just six minutes were on the clock when Liverpool took the lead. Writing in The Guardian, Tom Jack reported that a pass from Emlyn Hughes bounced over the Potters’ back line, allowing Heighway to head the ball home ‘with the nonchalance of a man nodding to a slight acquaintance’.

Yet perhaps the early goal led the Reds to be a little too nonchalant. They allowed the visitors back into the game in the second half, with their attackers, including England’s 1966 World Cup final hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst, testing Clemence. He held firm and Liverpool collected their first two points – the reward for a win at that time – of the campaign.

The following day, a new series of columns by Shankly began in the Sunday Express. Many of the lines from his first article have been repeatedly quoted since, but what stands out is the final paragraph.

“I feel that now the new Liverpool team have won something, they can, with their extra flair, surpass even the old side,” Shankly wrote.

These days, he would be accused of having summoned a jinx with what transpired two days later. The Reds travelled to Highfield Road to face Coventry City and suffered a 1-0 defeat by a team managed by former Red Gordon Milne.

Back in 1960, he had been the third signing Shankly made for Liverpool, less than a year after he had taken charge of the club. Milne made at least 47 appearances every season between 1961-62 and 1964-65, an important cog in Shankly’s first great red machine.

The Scot’s prediction that his new side would surpass their predecessors would come to pass later in the decade, but Milne had defended the honour of the old boys in this early-season fixture.

Contemporary match reports suggest the Sky Blues were worthy winners. However, it also appears the outcome of the game was determined in a crazy minute midway through the second half – Liverpool hit the post through Peter Cormack, Coventry immediately countered and scored through a long-range half-volley from Tommy Hutchison.

The result enabled the victors to join Burnley, Leeds United and Wolverhampton Wanderers on four points, with the Reds in the pack directly behind on two. It was hardly a catastrophic start, but Shankly would’ve no doubt viewed a defeat against the side that had finished 19th in the 22-team division three months earlier as two points dropped.

On the cover of the match programme for the game against Stoke, he was pictured for being the Manager of the Year for the previous season. Shankly was understandably beaming as he had guided Liverpool back to the top.

Keeping them there would not be an easy task. Coventry had already shown that, and further setbacks would occur in September too...

Stay tuned to Liverpoolfc.com for the next instalment of the series, which is coming soon.