It was never going to be easy to replace Kevin Keegan even for a club that could offer any player in the world domestic dominance and the likelihood of European glory. In 1977 the permed dervish was less than a year away from winning his first of two Ballon D’Or awards and during his time on Merseyside had developed into a fully realised superstar regularly capable of single-handed effervescence. Keegan was a one-off. How do you replace a one-off?
At least Liverpool had fair warning of their prized striker’s departure. Midway through the season that ultimately brought the Reds their third league championship that decade and first ever European Cup Keegan publicly announced his intention to leave the following summer. There was shock then and further surprise when the famously capricious character actually followed through with his plan. That he eventually chose Hamburg over the litany of more glamourous clubs who clamoured for his signature was the final twist in an altogether surreal episode.
His leaving left the kingdom of Anfield with an empty throne and in a more functional sense Bob Paisley’s magnificent machine minus a critical cog. It is little exaggeration to state that had Paisley chosen unwisely in determining Keegan’s successor the course of football’s recent history may have taken a very different path to the here and now. No second, third or fourth European Cups; no era of sublime supremacy on a scale never before witnessed; no growing up with Liverpool FC as the watchword for footballing excellence for an entire generation. Perhaps. Probably not, but perhaps.
As it was Paisley chose well. Indeed in hindsight he chose so well that it feels like fate intervened.
Time and again during their long reign Liverpool can take a great deal of credit for sourcing fantastic talent from football’s hinterlands: Scunthorpe; Northampton; Partick Thistle. Kenny Dalglish therefore was an exception in that he was hardly a gem found in the rough then patiently polished in the ‘Liverpool way’ but instead an established star in his own right. During his eight years at Celtic Park he had already secured legendary status scoring 112 goals and accumulated numerous international caps along the way. Even with Liverpool’s pulling power this one was going to be tricky and extremely expensive.
It took a fortnight of intensive negotiations for Celtic to even contemplate relinquishing their brilliant centre-forward and the very moment they half-ceded Paisley and club chairman John Smith drove from dawn to a hotel in Moffat some 30 miles outside of Glasgow, careful to book under assumed names. At the time the British transfer record stood at £350,000. By nightfall that had been smashed by £90,000.
Scotland had long furnished Liverpool with some of their finest greats, from Billy Liddell to Shankly. Now there was Dalglish, a player blessed with such rare vision, movement and exquisite artistry his success in England was all but guaranteed from the moment personal terms were agreed upon. Forty years ago today he signed, a scribble on a form that gave birth to a marvellous period of time that came after muddy pitches and before modern day commercialisation. In the late seventies and for much of the eighties there were Mitre balls, delicious Umbro and Admiral kits, the constant threat of hooliganism on the packed-out terraces, and King Kenny bustling for a moment of opportunity with his generous posterior before firing a beauty into the far corner. It is entirely redundant to plough through his incredible Liverpool CV here save for this: later this year Anfield’s Centenary Stand is to be named after the 66 year old and all of our dads admired him hugely despite the fact that he played for that lot.
But back we go to August 10th 1977. Liverpool had somehow managed to replace the irreplaceable in Keegan and acutely aware that they had Bob Paisley smiled benignly throughout at his new signing’s unveiling. In Scotland, perfectly illustrating the cyclical nature of transfers, Celtic boss Jock Stein was less happy. He had a problem and one he was willing to share with reporters. “I would have turned down any amount of money offered to him. Now where do I find another player like Dalglish?”
