by Simon Hughes
On Sunday mornings, Evans remembers seeing matches at a public playing field over the road from his house. ‘Sport was on my doorstep. You could see all the men getting angry. You’d have fisticuffs. But at the end of the game, they’d shake hands.’
His football education was furthered by watching Liverpool and Everton play home matches on alternate weekends. At Anfield, he stood in the boys’ pen. This was an area of the Kop reserved for pimply faced urchins, where other ‘extras from Oliver Twist’, as an observer from the time once described them, would shriek swear words all afternoon. Evans recalls the sense of achievement when he invaded the pitch to celebrate Liverpool’s promotion from the old Second Division in 1962 as a thirteen year old.
By then, he’d already become the best player successively at St Robert Bellarmine primary school and then St George of England secondary school. ‘I always seemed to be two years younger than the lads I was playing with and against.’ Progress was marked by selection for Bootle Schoolboys, Lancashire Schoolboys and then England Schoolboys. Offers came to join Chelsea and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Yet it was Everton who were most determined. ‘The scout was on my doorstep every Sunday morning.’
Evans waited. Finally, Liverpool approached. Not for the last time, he went with his heart, even though it meant giving up cricket, a sport in which he again excelled, representing Lancashire. ‘I went to Shanks and asked if I could go on tour with them. It was just a simple “No. It’s football or nothing.”’
On Monday, 16 March 1970, Evans made his first-team debut in Liverpool’s 3–0 victory over Sheffield Wednesday at Anfield. A stand-in for Ian Ross at left-back, he kept his place when Ipswich Town were beaten the following weekend. But after a 1–0 defeat at West Ham United, that place was lost.
Evans says he was plagued by a feeling that he was not quick enough for First Division football. ‘It had never been a problem when I was younger but suddenly I felt a couple of steps behind everyone else. In my mind, I knew what I wanted to do but my body wouldn’t really let me do it.’
Between August of the same year and December 1973, Evans played just four games before another chance came against Manchester United. Wearing the number 3 shirt, he kept George Best quiet during a 2–0 win. ‘At the final whistle, Besty came over and thanked me for not kicking him off the park.’ Four days later, Evans played his last match, a 2–1 loss at Burnley. Alec Lindsay, virtually ever-present previously, returned to the side and six months later Evans was offered the post of reserveteam trainer. He says those in the Boot Room had spotted his ability to ‘follow instructions and pass information on with a bit of enthusiasm’.
Evans was hired by a group of five men with a combined age of 259. Bob Paisley, Liverpool’s new manager, was fifty-five; his assistant Joe Fagan and head of youth development Tom Saunders were both fifty-three. First-team trainer Reuben Bennett was nearly fifty-nine – the same age as Bill Shankly when he retired a few months earlier – while Ronnie Moran, promoted from reserveto first-team duties, was the youngest at forty but had nearly a decade of coaching experience behind him already. Evans was just twenty-six.
These were people who since 1959, when Evans was eleven years old, had helped take Liverpool from eighth position in the old Second Division to the cusp of European greatness, men old enough to claim a pension, avuncular types with so many creases on their foreheads it seemed as though their knitted hats had been tacked on. In normal circumstances, they would be travelling around Liverpool on reduced-rate bus passes, yet here they were at Melwood wearing Gola tracksuits, heavy black jumpers and muddied football boots, showing professional footballers half their age how it was done in five-a-side matches.
The Boot Room was a shabby space, twelve feet by twelve feet, that reeked of dubbin, liniment and sweaty boots. There were no windows. Almost-empty bottles of Glenfiddich stood on a few wall ledges and the floor space was taken up by crates of Guinness Export and cases of Harp lager that doubled up as chairs to complement the two real ones by the old wooden door. It was staff-only. Every day of the week, Paisley, Fagan, Moran, Bennett and Saunders would gather to discuss what had gone well in training and what had not. Any player found lurking outside suffered the wrath of Moran. After matches, the doors were opened and stars like musician Rod Stewart, opposition coaches and managers were invited in. Although the premise was for ‘a cup of tea or a beer’, as Moran puts it, in the true spirit of Liverpool, kidology conversations were geared towards gathering information that might lead to another Liverpool victory some time in the future. Evans calls it ‘interrogation by feather duster’.
Bill Shankly, who had his own office and other duties to attend to, rarely ventured into the Boot Room, only occasionally showing his face. In his absence, the other staff members would even gather for a debrief on a Sunday morning from ten o’clock until twelve, after those of a religious persuasion had been to Mass. Boots were washed and hung back on pegs – first team first and reserve team second. Kits were absent, however, having been transported home in wicker baskets after the match. The staff did not trust external laundrymen after several kits had been shrunk or gone missing. The responsibility was now shared between Evans and Moran, who passed the duty of washing shirts and shorts on alternate weekends to their wives, Mary and Joyce.
‘Imagine being so young and being welcomed into a place that at the time was the place to be. It was like being invited on tour with the Beatles. But what made the Boot Room wasn’t the room itself; it was the people inside it – the clever minds. In reality, it was a pokey little space underneath the Main Stand, filled with cases of beer, bottles of whisky and boots.
‘My biggest input initially was a Playboy calendar on the wall,’ Evans laughs lightly. ‘People would send them through the post to us. If Liverpool ever lost, which wasn’t very often, Bob would look at the calendar, point at the pair of tits and go, “Those two up there could have done better today.” Then, despite the defeat, we’d chuckle along with him.’
Although he took no notice of the comment at the time, Evans was earmarked more or less immediately as a future Liverpool manager by chairman John Smith. ‘We have not made an appointment for today but for the future,’ he said. The grooming process was under way.
‘Reserve-team matches were played on the same day as first-team matches. When the opportunities were there, like a European game, they’d tell me to come along. The message was always the same. I can hear Bob telling me now, “If you’ve got something to say, say it.” For my first year, I thought, “Hang on a minute, I’m twenty-six, I was a bit-part player at best not so long ago; what can I offer?” So I asked them why. I went to Joe. “It’s nice you’re giving me the right to speak and have an opinion, but …” Joe stopped me. “You might just see one thing we don’t, a little gem one day that we’ve all missed. If you think we’re wrong, tell us. And if we think you’re wrong, we’ll tell you. But never take offence if that happens. It’s only opinion.”
‘With the reserves, I could do it my way. Bob, Joe and Ronnie would come to our games when they could and sit on the bench. They wouldn’t interfere. I was the one making the decisions, telling players off when it was necessary. It gave me tremendous confidence.’
Evans was his own man. ‘The trick was to put your personality into it. I was never going to be a Ronnie Moran, someone whose work can’t be underestimated. He made sure everyone fell in line and gets called the sergeant-major, but he was much more than that. Joe was the glue. Bob wasn’t great at speaking in front of a crowd but everyone on the staff knew what he meant. Then I was the fella that put the arm around a few, hence the reputation as Mr Nice Guy. There was a great balance, all good people, nobody went after anyone else.
‘I remember going to Man City once and we won convincingly. Joe was manager. Afterwards, we went into their Boot Room for a drink and one of their coaches comes in going, “Our manager picked the wrong team today.” Joe looks at him and responds, “What are you telling us for? If you think that, g
o and tell the manager to his face, not us.” That kind of thing never happened at Liverpool.
‘When I was in charge [as manager], I’d discuss the team with the staff a few days before. “This is what I’m thinking of.” Then we’d go round the table, each person offering their own ideas. But once I’d made the decision, I’d insist they backed me. You should never, as staff, go behind the manager’s back and try to be clever after the event. When you’re part of a coaching team, you back the fella in charge.’
Paisley won more trophies as Liverpool manager than Shankly. Yet without Shankly, Evans believes Liverpool would never have moved forward, offering Paisley the opportunities he exploited. Although Shankly was asked by Paisley not to turn up at Melwood following his retirement, with Paisley feeling undermined by players still referring to Shankly as ‘Boss’, Shankly’s influence at the club remained.
‘Really, the Liverpool way is Shanks’s way,’ Evans says. ‘The man came and changed the whole outlook of the club. It was all about good players doing the simple things well. He wasn’t the greatest coach in the world. Joe, Bob and Ronnie took most of the training. Shanks would throw a little bit in. But he was the best manager, the best motivator. You certainly can’t coach a team to win. There is no manual that says: “This is how you win football matches.” There are training techniques and tactics that can help you win. But the art of winning is something you can’t teach.
‘Shanks was great at making people feel good and brilliant at making people feel awful as well. With one word, he could make you feel ten foot tall or bury you deep into the ground. He was like an actor doing a job. I thought of him like I thought of John Wayne. Other days, he’d be like a mafia mob boss. He made it fun; he made it all about the ball. He also trusted players to make big decisions on the pitch. Above all, it was geared towards getting the result at the end of the week.’
Although Shankly was gone, his ideas helped Evans establish himself as reserve-team manager. For example, on Monday afternoons Shankly had instituted the tradition of six-a-side games, with the sides made up of two first-team players, two from the reserves and two juniors.
‘You’d get a sixteen year old playing up front with Roger Hunt. Other weeks, it’d be Cally [Ian Callaghan] or Gerry Byrne. The interaction was great. If one of the senior players thought a youngster had a chance, they’d take them under their wing and push them forward to the management.
‘Being so young, sometimes I had to deal with players that were older than me, players that had been better at football. But the culture of the club was well established: if you didn’t play for the first team, you played for the reserves. It was the accepted norm. We also had a very strong team. We played winning football and aimed to win the reserve league every year. The more experienced lads knew, coming with us, they weren’t playing with a bunch of nuggets, because they’d already trained with us too. We really wanted it.
‘Shanks had instilled the idea that the second-best team in Liverpool was the Liverpool reserves and not Everton. It resulted in reserve matches being seen as important. If a player wasn’t in the first team, his only way back was by playing well for the reserves. I think every player treated the reserve matches seriously. At the end of the day, they were pulling on the red shirt of Liverpool. It mattered.’
Evans admits that he did not have the ‘charisma’ of Shankly, the ‘ruthlessness’ of Paisley nor necessarily the tactical mind of Fagan. He believes his main strength was common sense.
‘I understood what a lot of the boys were going through, because a few years earlier I had been in the same position. Some of them needed delicate handling, so there were times when you’d put your arm round their shoulder and then other times when you needed to give them a bollocking.’
After the turbulent Souness regime, Liverpool needed a steady hand at the helm. The summer before his appointment as manager, Evans became assistant. The board were preparing for Souness’s departure. Having tampered with the hereditary line, Evans was a return to what the board once knew. It was never admitted publicly but, within, there was a hope that Evans could create a new Boot Room.
Souness’s era had left Evans without any natural successors. With Moran becoming assistant, he approached Tottenham Hotspur’s Doug Livermore, an old teammate from the reserve days, and made him first-team coach. Livermore had left Anfield to coach Norwich, Spurs and the Welsh national team. Sammy Lee, another home-grown and hard-working disciple of the Liverpool way, was charged with managing the second string.
Evans also realized that there was a need for specialists. In the past, even the great goalkeepers like Ray Clemence did not have a coach directing them. Clemence always trained with the outfielders, improving his reading of the game so that he was able to sweep up behind the defence. For a short period at the start of the 1970s, Shankly allowed Tony Waiters, who had appeared as goalkeeper for Blackpool on more than three hundred occasions, to work with Clemence and the defence. Yet Waiters – a clipboard-and-whistle type of a coach – clashed with the other staff and within a few months he’d left for Burnley. When Clemence later admitted to Shankly that he was a nervous goalkicker, Shankly’s response was to remove the flags at the top of the Kemlyn Road Stand. If there was no sign of wind, there was less to worry about.
Evans realized such a basic approach amounted to neglect of a crucial position. ‘Graeme toyed with the idea of getting someone in but Bruce [Grobbelaar] had been our first-choice goalkeeper for so long and he actually preferred training as an outfielder,’ Evans says. With Grobbelaar on his way out of Liverpool and his successor David James needing guidance, Joe Corrigan, who’d played more than six hundred times as Manchester City’s number 1, was named goalkeeping coach.
The next move was to appoint a full-time physiotherapist. With Mark Leather’s arrival, there was an end to the runningrepair jobs carried out by a succession of unqualified coaches mid game. Regularly injured players had long been treated with suspicion at Liverpool. Shankly maintained his side were the fittest in the league, with pre-season geared towards building stamina and therefore preventing muscle tears. It was a difficult theory to argue against. Liverpool won the 1965–66 title using just fourteen players all season. Anyone who suffered an injury was almost bullied into feeling better. ‘Otherwise you really were persona non grata,’ Alan Hansen said. Leather’s recruitment meant that Moran could focus on drilling the first team in the Liverpool way rather than writing what Evans describes as ‘little scribbles’ on an old ledger, charting training patterns.
Evans recognized that the squad was not up to previous standards. He admits advising Souness against making certain signings. But he also reaffirms, ‘Once the manager has made his decision you have to back him.’
Evans believes Liverpool’s deterioration began before Souness’s arrival. ‘It wasn’t the best team around in 1991,’ he says, explaining that it was understandable if Dalglish had lost his focus after the Hillsborough disaster. ‘Football did not seem to matter any more.’
Evans regrets waiting six months before starting his own rebuilding process. ‘There had been so many changes under Graeme, I wanted things to settle down and give everyone a chance to prove themselves. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, maybe it was a bit of naivety. If I had my time again, I probably would have got rid of people sooner, bringing others in; enabling us to hit the ground running the next season. In my mind, I knew what needed to happen.’
With Evans as coach of the reserves, Liverpool had won five successive Central League titles and numerous regional cups. It was no coincidence that when Evans succeeded Souness as manager in 1994, having achieved excellent results with young players, the average age of Liverpool’s first team dropped by three and a half years.
Although given a debut by Souness, Robbie Fowler flourished, scoring nearly one hundred and twenty goals in four seasons. Evans had first seen the forward as an eleven year old putting a hat-trick past his own son, Stephen, who was goalkeeper, during a schoolboys�
�� game in Burscough. ‘Afterwards, I checked that Liverpool had already signed him and fortunately we had,’ Evans remembers, adding that he felt lucky to be walking into a job that would involve working with some of the most exciting players in the country.
‘They were all different: different lads with distinct personalities. Robbie was a natural finisher. Maybe he didn’t have great pace but upstairs he had it going on. Then Michael [Owen] came into the situation. Nobody could deal with his speed. It was unreal. He gets a lot of criticism now, Michael – a bit like Steve McManaman and Jamie Redknapp, who was on the same level as anyone else in the Premier League in terms of passing ability. But these players gave the club nearly a decade of service. Joining Man United wasn’t the best thing to do but please don’t forget how brilliant Michael was.’
Evans would have preferred to use experienced players. ‘But when the young boys are better already, you can’t ignore them. Really, you want the senior lads to be forcing the issue – like when I was reserve-team manager, giving Bob no excuse to change the side.
‘Robbie was regularly in the starting eleven at eighteen. A bit later, you had Michael [Owen] starting games at sixteen. I know Michael has since said that it would have been better for his career if he was in and out a bit more. But Michael, for instance, would never stop asking to play. He was desperate. And with good reason. You try to balance it the best you can. Whenever I left Robbie or Michael out, they went crazy. They’d be knocking on my door and stopping me before training. That’s what made them top players. They were as keen as mustard. They wanted to play every game. I want players like that – not ones that didn’t seem bothered. There were a few of them about.’