Speaker 2
in terms of kind of being a little bit scared because I knew that Martin would think nothing of snapping you. He had those weird eyes that Pat van der Naut had, he had the same one. He still got them. He still got them. Tony was cracking, don't get me wrong, Tony was a cracking defender. And again, somebody I got to know at England as well, and liked Tony. Tony wasn't quite as intimidated. He was hard, but he was kind of more in the Stuart Pierce mold as opposed to the Martin Keown mold. Well, a number of years ago I met Martin Keown in an airport
Speaker 3
I loved being captain of Liverpool. Absolutely loved it. We'd just been beaten on Boxing Day 3-1 by Man City at home. Bruce, the juggler was at it in the game. He just arrived in that summer, 1981. So things were all going wrong. And I can remember the awful day we've come back from training in between that and the third round of the FA Cup, playing Swansea away at the vetch. And Swansea were then in the top division and I remember coming back from training and Joe Fagan came down the bus because we always went by bus to Melbourne and come back. Joe Fagan as we were coming back came along the bus and he went, Tomo the boss Bob Paisley wants to see you after training and I thought what's that all about so I'm sitting next to Terry, me mate, and I wonder what all that's about and he went well I don't know and in front of him Ray Kennedy, God bless him, he turned around he says I know what it is and I went oh yeah what is it and he went can't tell you and I went you can't do that you can't say can't tell you now and he went okay you haven't the captaincy taken off you? I said, you what? I said, you joking? He said, no, he said, that's what he's got. That's what I was sure is. I was in the bath. Yeah, the bath. Got myself done, got myself, I raced down the corridor to Bob Paisley's office. I went in there and I said, what's happening? Bob wasn't very articulate with the way he spoke and everything. And he's going to bumble his way through this and he, well, we're going to, you know, look, the captaincy seems as though it's a burden to you and responsibility you're taking everything on your shoulders and I think if we, and I said, so you're going to take the captaincy off me. And I said, well, you wouldn't be giving it to that Grimson, that's by any chance, would you? And he went, yeah, well, we'll do it for a few weeks and see what happens. And I said, no, I said, this been happening behind my back. I got up, stormed out, slammed the door shut. So it had been going on behind my back. And that's what more upset me. And because things weren't going well on the pitch, granted, but you don't like players who are sort of in the background. So we didn't speak Graham and myself for about three or four weeks because I knew this had been happening. It just happened. Not a problem happens. It evolves captaincy as I took over from Emmeline. So I was very disappointed, but I went out against Swansea, third round to the FA, massive game, third round. And I was like that, I was fuming. So captain in the front, when I was non playing, captain, I was at the back. So I'm just going out the door and Joe Fagan put his hand on me and he went, listen, Phil, I think, and I went, don't ever tell me what to do. I said, when I get out there on my pitch, we are warriors together. And I says, nothing will stop me. We are going to fight out there. And I says, brothers, mates, you don't ever tell me what to do in my private life. And I stormed off out to the pitch. We won't fall nil. We won't fall nil. I played probably one of the best games. And you know what? Bob Paisley made the right call. At the time, I was emotional and I was so angry. But I had took too much responsibility. I took responsibility for every goal that was good. Every team meeting. Go like that. And he'd go, you know, when the play went past Phil Neal. And I went, ah. But if I'd covered Phil a bit more and been a bit more towards him, and then when the ball, the ball come across, and they were going, how did you miss that header? I said, no, that was my positional play. I thought about, and I thought, you're spot on. He's been watching this. Bob was very, very clever. And he'd watched, and he'd seen me taking all this responsibility and it was affecting my game. And my performances from then, and we were 12th in the league, 12 points behind the leaders. We went on to win the league by seven or eight points, something like that, with three or four games to go.
