It was epic don't get me wrong. But what is 'faeces flinging, pocket pissing' in reference to? Hope it's not Hillsboro. And also 'Shankley shunning'. They love Shanks.
Think it is in response to the club shunning him after he retired as manager
I went to the training ground at Melwood for a while. It is only down the road from where I live. But then I got the impression that it would perhaps be better if I stopped going. I felt there was some resentment – “What the hell is he doing here?†So I changed my life. I still do a bit of training to keep myself in reasonable shape and to have something to do which resembles what I used to do, and there are plenty of other places to train where I am welcomed.
I packed up going to Melwood and I also stopped going into the directors’ box at Anfield. I still go to matches, of course. I sit in the stand. I would have loved to have been invited to away matches, but I waited and waited until I became tired of waiting.
Finally, after twenty months and after Liverpool had won the League championship again, I was invited to travel with the club to Bruges for the second leg of the UEFA Cup final. I accepted, because I didn’t want anybody to think I was petty, but it came too late for my peace of mind.
I couldn’t help wondering why it had taken them so long. And I was not impressed with the arrangements they made for me in Bruges, where I was put into a different hotel to the one used by the official party. I found that quite insulting.
The invitation to Bruges could not make up for the previous twenty months, when it would have been the greatest thing in the world for me if Liverpool had been playing at Middlesbrough or Tottenham, and they had said, “Would you like to go?†I would have said, “Oh, yes, certainly I would like to.†Some of the directors invite their friends to the games. I wouldn’t have been in the way. I wouldn’t have done any harm. But I would have been associated in some way, and amongst them, and I would have been just as anxious as the manager of the team for them to win, because they were all my players.
I soon realised that Liverpool preferred me to make my own arrangements, so that’s what I started to do. I asked other clubs for tickets, sometimes when Liverpool were the visiting team and sometimes to see other teams play. And I have not been short of invitations from other clubs, either. Derby County invited me to a match, and West Ham asked me to be their guest when they played Liverpool in the FA Cup. Ron Greenwood, West Ham’s general manager, couldn’t have been nicer. We even had a meal together.
Tommy Docherty invited me to Old Trafford when Manchester United played Liverpool in a night match. Tommy invited me to have a meal with him in the restaurant at Old Trafford and we enjoyed a wonderful hour of banter before the match. Sidney Reakes, the Liverpool director, said to Tommy, “I see Bill Shankly’s here.†“Aye,†said Tommy. “He’s welcome here.â€
I might add that I count Everton amongst the clubs who have welcomed me over the last few seasons. I have been received more warmly by Everton than I have been by Liverpool.
It is scandalous and outrageous that I should have to write these things about the club I helped to build into what it is today, because if the situation had been reversed I would have invited people to games. It would have been a wonderful honour to have been made a director of Liverpool Football Club, but I don’t go round saying, “I would like to be this and that.†That’s begging – and I’m not a beggar! No, no – anything I have done and everything I have got, I have worked for.