"Lord, I don't ask that I should win, but please, please don't let me finish behind Akabusi."
Joe Fagan, Reluctant champion – the authorised biography
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Andrew Fagan and Mark Platt, London, Aurum 2011. ISBN 978184513 550 8
Despite following football all through the Joe Fagan era, I knew remarkably little about him. One point that emerges again and again from the book – co-written by his grandson is that his influence was much greater in practice than on paper. As well as the two years when he was manager, his role and influence under Shankly and Paisley was immense.
Football in the 1970s and 80s was a different world from today. After retiring from playing he could not afford a car in his first coaching job and had to get lifts to and from work. He turned down another coaching job because the salary was not much more than his travelling expenses! He lived all though his time as a Liverpool coach and manager in a small house near Anfield. In his early days at Liverpool, the book says that he was earning less than the national average. Think of what Rafa earned and where he lived in comparison – and Joe won the League title and the European Cup!
Their role too was a bit different. Bob Paisley – a painter by trade – built the dug-out while Joe organized the painting of barriers on the terraces when Anfield needed a make-over.
The importance of the League Cup in the 1980s seems strange to the modern reader. There is also a reference to Fagan choosing a weakened team in a league game the week before the FA Cup Final to rest key players. Contrast that with Alex Ferguson choosing a weakened team for the Cup Final to rest players for more important games!
Another stat that amazes the modern reader is that Liverpool won the league using just 14 players over the season – the same number that a 2011 club would typically use for each game!
The book gives a poignant account of the Hysel, sadly Joe’s last game as a Liverpool manager. The experience was a burden that he carried with him for the rest of his life.
Joe Fagan was one of life’s gentlemen. The book includes tributes to him for many different people within professional football. He is well summed up in the following quotation from the book: He did not love football for the glory and the glamour that it provided. He loved football for the game itself, the friendships it built, the release it provided and the satisfaction of a job done well”.