Grimsby Town
After a failed interview at Liverpool, Shankly moved to manage Grimsby Town in 1951.
When Shankly arrived at Grimsby he inherited an ageing group of players and the club had just been relegated to Division 3 North, their second relegation in four seasons. While the morale of the players and supporters was low, Shankly reasoned that they were the same players who had served Grimsby in the top flight, and he was quickly able to use the raw material at his disposal to weld the players into a capable side. [3] He quickly became a cult figure at Blundell Park, and the team regularly drew crowds in excess of 20,000, while Shankly, still a competent player, would attract attendances in excess of 5,000 when appearing for the reserves. However, Grimsby missed out on promotion in 1951-52, despite picking up 36 points out a possible 40 in the last 20 matches. It was to be a last hurrah for the old team, and after a bright start to the 1952-53 season, their form slumped. Shankly was given little money to buy new players and was reluctant to blood some promising reserves because of the loyalty he felt to these older stalwarts (a fault that was to surface at Liverpool years later). Disillusioned by events, he quit in January 1954, citing once again a lack of ambition by the board as his main reason.
Intriguingly in his autobiography Shankly was to claim that his Grimsby team was: "Pound for pound, and class for class, the best football team I have seen in England since the war. In the league they were in they played football nobody else could play. Everything was measured, planned and perfected and you could not wish to see more entertaining football."
“I know this is a sad occasion but I think that Dixie would be amazed to know that even in death he could draw a bigger crowd than Everton can on a Saturday afternoon.” at Dixie Dean’s funeral
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