Boot Room

The Liverpool Boot Room was a room at Anfield, home of Liverpool F.C., during the 1960s to the early 1990s where the coaching staff would sit, drink tea and discuss the team, tactics and ways of defeating the next opposing side.

The Boot Room was a small room near the changing rooms that stored the squad's football boots. Bill Shankly converted it into an informal coaches' meeting room, with a relaxing atmosphere that paid dividends for a Liverpool side who were rebuilding at the time. The original members of the Boot Room were Shankly, Bob Paisley, Reuben Bennett, Tom Saunders and Joe Fagan. Neither Bennett nor Saunders ever went on to manage the club, however it was Bennett who remained at Anfield the longest.

Out of the five, Saunders was the only one to hold a full coaching certificate, but among them they provided the common thread that held Liverpool together for almost 40 years. Each man filled a specific role; Paisley was a tactician who had an eye for spotting a transfer target. Bennett, who was closest to Shankly, was the link to the manager. Fagan, in Roy Evans' words, was "the glue that held everything together". Fagan, however inadvertently, could claim to have founded the Boot Room in the sense that he was the first to store the crates of Guinness, given as a thank-you from the brewery's team, in the Room. They were joined in 1967 when Shankly asked ex Liverpool player Geoff Twentyman to join the boot room staff as chief scout.

Paisley knew Liverpool traditions, having been a player, becoming a physiotherapist and then a coach. He also knew what the Liverpool faithful expected from their side. Fagan was quiet but very astute and a favourite of Shankly's, who had tried in vain to sign him as a player whilst he was the manager of Grimsby Town. Reuben Bennett was a friend of Shankly's as well as a work colleague and a decent player in his own right. After Shankly retired in 1974, the Boot Room tradition was carried on by succeeding managers Paisley, Fagan and Kenny Dalglish during the most illustrious era of the club's history.

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