This episode contains discussion of the Heysel Stadium disaster (1985, 39 deaths) and the Hillsborough disaster (1989, 97 deaths).

There are episodes in this series about glory, and episodes about failure. Episode Six is something harder than either: it is about joy and catastrophe arriving together, so closely intertwined that it becomes impossible to separate one from the other.

Joe Fagan's treble in his debut season. The night at Heysel in May 1985 when 39 people died before a European Cup final, and Liverpool were banned from Europe for five years. Kenny Dalglish as player-manager, winning the double in his first season. John Barnes arriving in 1987 and producing, in 1987-88, one of the most complete seasons any Liverpool player has ever had. The FA Cup final lost to Wimbledon. Sheffield, 15 April 1989, and everything it cost. The title lost on the last minute of the last day to Arsenal. One more championship in 1990 — the last for thirty years. And then, on 22 February 1991, a press conference and a resignation and the end of an era.

Player of the Era: John Barnes — Jamaican-born, from Watford; arrived just as the great storm was gathering; played, somehow, as if defying it.

Central question: How do you carry on after football stops feeling like the most important thing?

Research Sources

The Hillsborough Independent Panel Report (2012) — the definitive account of the disaster, its causes, and the subsequent cover-up; essential reading before recording this episode

Phil Scraton, Hillsborough: The Truth (Mainstream Publishing, 1999; updated 2016) — the academic study that underpinned the families' campaign; the most thorough single-volume account

Kenny Dalglish, My Liverpool Home (Hodder & Stoughton, 2010) — Dalglish's account of the aftermath of both Heysel and Hillsborough, and the toll they took; the most direct available source on his experience

John Barnes, The Autobiography (Headline, 1999) — Barnes's account of his career at Liverpool, including the racial abuse and his relationship with the supporters; direct and illuminating

Brian Pead, Liverpool: A Complete Record — for the specific match results, scorelines, and trophy details throughout this period

David Conn, The Fall of the House of FIFA and various Guardian investigations into Heysel — for the UEFA and administrative failures that made the Brussels stadium disaster possible

The board turned to the quiet man who had been sitting in the Boot Room for fifteen years. Bob Paisley didn't want the job. He said so. They made him take it anyway. And then, without anyone quite noticing how or when it happened, he became the most successful manager in the history of British football.

Episode Five covers nine seasons that produced six league titles, three European Cups, and a win rate of fifty-eight percent — delivered by a man in a cardigan who deflected every compliment and attributed every success to his players. Rome in 1977, Wembley in 1978, Paris in 1981. The quiet signings — Dalglish, Hansen, Souness, Rush — that made it all possible. And the question this episode keeps returning to: what is genius when it refuses to announce itself?

Player of the Era: Kenny Dalglish — signed for a record £440,000 to replace Kevin Keegan; became Liverpool's King; scored the only goal in the 1978 European Cup final with a chip so calm it looked inevitable.

Research Sources

Bob Paisley, Bob Paisley: An Autobiography (Arthur Barker, 1983) — Paisley's own account; characteristically modest throughout; essential for understanding how he framed his own achievements and deflected credit

Stephen F. Kelly, The Boot Room Boys (1999) — the most detailed account of the Boot Room culture and how it operated under Paisley; essential for understanding the institutional dimension of this era

Kenny Dalglish, My Liverpool Home (Hodder & Stoughton, 2010) — Dalglish's account of his playing years under Paisley; vivid and affectionate about the manager and the club culture of the era

Brian Pead, Liverpool: A Complete Record — season-by-season results and trophy tallies throughout this period; the final accounting section draws directly on these records

John Williams, Red Men — social context of the 1970s and early 1980s in Liverpool and the city's relationship with the football club during the Paisley years

Phil Thompson, various interviews — Thompson played under both Shankly and Paisley and his accounts of the contrast between the two managers are among the most illuminating available

At some point in the late 1960s, the sign appeared above the tunnel at Anfield. Four words: THIS IS ANFIELD. It was Shankly's idea. He wanted the opposing players to feel it as they walked out — the weight of the place, the history of it, the crowd waiting above. It worked. It still works.

Episode Four covers Shankly's second great era — the rebuilding after the first team aged, the arrivals of Kevin Keegan, Emlyn Hughes, and John Toshack, the UEFA Cup and league double of 1973, the 3-0 FA Cup final demolition of Newcastle in 1974. And then, on 12 July 1974, the announcement that no one believed: Shankly was retiring. The aftermath — his regret, his semi-exile from the club he had built, his death in 1981 — is one of football's most painful stories.

Player of the Era: Kevin Keegan — £33,000 from Scunthorpe; grew into one of Europe's finest players; the embodiment of what Shankly could see in people before they could see it themselves.

Research Sources

Dave Bowler, Shanks: The Authorised Biography of Bill Shankly (Orion, 1996) — essential for the retirement decision, the aftermath, and Shankly's own statements about what happened; the most authoritative account of the final years at Liverpool

Kevin Keegan, My Autobiography (Little, Brown, 1997) — Keegan's account of his time at Liverpool, the culture under Shankly, and the specific detail of the 1971 signing and its aftermath

Stephen F. Kelly, The Boot Room Boys (1999) — for the coaching staff's perspective on the transition from Shankly to Paisley, and the institutional culture that made it possible

Brian Pead, Liverpool: A Complete Record — season results, scorelines, and European match details throughout this period

Nessie Shankly, various interviews (ITV, BBC) — Nessie's accounts of her husband's state of mind in retirement are the most candid available source on the psychological cost of his departure

John Williams, Red Men — social and cultural context of the early 1970s Anfield

In December 1959, Liverpool FC were tenth in the Second Division. The directors, having finally accepted that something fundamental needed to change, advertised the manager's job. A Scotsman named Bill Shankly heard about it and took the train south from Huddersfield, where he had been quietly reinventing a struggling club. He would never quite leave Liverpool again.

Episode Three covers Shankly's first great era — the rebuilding from the Second Division, the signing of Ian St. John and Ron Yeats, the invention of the Boot Room, the all-red strip, and back-to-back titles in 1964 and 1966, with the first FA Cup in between. This is the story of what one man's absolute certainty can do to an institution that has forgotten how to believe in itself.

Player of the Era: Ian St. John — the Motherwell striker signed for £37,500 in 1961, who became the soul of Shankly's first great team and proved that resurrection was possible.

Research Sources

Dave Bowler, Shanks: The Authorised Biography of Bill Shankly (Orion, 1996) — the definitive account of Shankly's life and management; essential for the arrival at Liverpool, the early signings, and the character of the man

Ian St. John, The Saint: My Autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2005) — St. John's own account of his time at Liverpool; vivid, funny, and specific about the culture Shankly created

John Williams, Red Men: Liverpool Football Club — The Biography — for the social and cultural context of the 1960s Anfield and the Kop's developing identity

Brian Pead, Liverpool: A Complete Record — season results, scorelines, and statistics throughout this period

Phil Thompson and others, various interviews and memoirs — for the atmosphere inside Anfield during the Shankly years; the Boot Room culture; the effect of Shankly on individual players

In 1923, Liverpool were back-to-back champions of England. In 1954, they were relegated to the Second Division. What happened in between is the story of a great club forgetting how to be great — of complacency masquerading as stability, of directors comfortable with mediocrity, of a scouting network that dissolved and was never rebuilt.

Episode Two covers thirty-six years of drift, punctuated by one brief return to glory — the 1947 championship under George Kay — and sustained, through the bleakest stretches, by a single extraordinary player. Billy Liddell was so dominant during Liverpool's years in the Second Division that supporters renamed the club "Liddellpool." He deserved better than he got. Most clubs do, during their dark years.

Player of the Era: Billy Liddell — the Scottish winger from Motherwell who gave the Kop joy in the barren years; a player of rare genius in service of a club that barely deserved him.

Research Sources

John Williams, Red Men: Liverpool Football Club — The Biography (Mainstream Publishing) — essential for the social history of the inter-war and post-war periods, and for the portrait of the Kop's culture in the 1940s and 1950s

Brian Pead, Liverpool: A Complete Record (DB Publishing) — season-by-season results and league finishes throughout this period

Billy Liddell, My Soccer Story (1960) — Liddell's own memoir, invaluable for understanding his character, his wartime service, and his relationship with Liverpool supporters

Liverpool Echo archives, 1923–1959 — contemporary match reports and supporter correspondence throughout the drift period; essential for getting the mood of the era right

Stephen F. Kelly, The Boot Room Boys (1999) — contains useful material on the institutional culture (or lack of it) at Liverpool in the pre-Shankly era

It begins with an argument about rent. In January 1892, Everton Football Club voted to leave their Anfield ground rather than accept a rent increase from their landlord, John Houlding. They walked across Stanley Park to Goodison Road and never came back. Houlding, left with an empty stadium, did the only logical thing: he founded a new club and filled it.

Episode One covers Liverpool's first three decades — from John McKenna's scouting trips to Scotland that assembled the "Team of the Macs," through Tom Watson's seventeen years of professional ambition that produced two league championships, to the post-war back-to-back titles of 1921 and 1922 that should have launched a dynasty and were instead its end. Why Liverpool spent the next twenty-four years winning nothing is one of the game's great unanswered questions. This episode asks it.

Player of the Era: Alex Raisbeck — the Stirlingshire half-back who captained the 1901 champions and gave Liverpool its first identity, at a time when the club was still trying to prove it deserved to exist.