Iconic images: Shankly passes the baton to Paisley
Throughout LFC's 125th anniversary year, Liverpoolfc.com will retrace the club's history through the striking images that plot a fascinating journey.
Sixth in the series is a photograph that shows Bill Shankly holding aloft his seventh, and final, major trophy as Liverpool manager along with his assistant and successor, Bob Paisley.
"I felt tired from all the years...my mind was made up. If we had lost the final I would have carried on, but I thought, 'well, we've won the Cup now and maybe it's a good time to go'. I knew I was going to finish."
As he sat in the Wembley dressing room following Liverpool's 3-0 FA Cup final victory over Newcastle United on May 4, 1974, it dawned on Shankly that it was time.
After 14-and-a-half years, nearly 800 games and seven major honours, it was time. Shankly, aged 60, had decided to leave his post as manager of Liverpool Football Club.
An official announcement did not come until mid-July, as the club's board of directors attempted to persuade the man who had led Liverpool from the wilderness of the Second Division to the upper echelons of English and European football to stay. Their efforts, of course, were in vain.
That his impending departure was not yet public knowledge adds a certain poignancy to the image above.
Shankly and Paisley each hold a handle of the FA Cup as it is paraded through the city of Liverpool on an open-top bus the day after Kevin Keegan's double and a Steve Heighway goal had defeated Newcastle.
Along with Heighway and captain Emlyn Hughes, Keegan is in shot, too.
"Kevin Keegan sensed my feelings [in the Wembley dressing room], he said so later," Shankly noted.
While Keegan may have expected what was to come, the Liverpool supporters who lined the streets to celebrate their team's latest triumph didn't. The end of an era was nigh.
That Shankly is sharing this moment, his final moment of glory, with Paisley is symbolic.
This photograph illustrates the passing of the torch from the man who, as the banner said, 'laid the foundations', to the man who 'built the house'.
Click 'next' to continue the journey...