Liverpool are hot favourites now to win this season’s Premier League. Jurgen Klopp left the present manager Arne Slot a fine squad and the Dutchman has maintained the surge and more.

Slot is Liverpool’s 22nd full-time manager. During my time at ITV, I interviewed and reported on seven of the Anfield managers plus the stand-in spell of Ronnie Moran for ten matches. This week, I concentrate on the first – the legendary Bill Shankly.

Liverpool are a wonderful club with fantastic support. They won their first Football League title in 1901 and since then have won 18 further top division titles, eight FA Cups, ten Football League Cups, six European Cups, and others including the UEFA Cup and Charity Shields. Many of these honours came during the reign of those seven managers.

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Bill Shankly was their charismatic manager for 15 seasons from December 1, 1959 to July 12, 1974.

During those magical years, his team won three League titles, two FA Cups, four Charity Shields and the club’s first European trophy – the UEFA Cup. He galvanised the fans with whom he had a great rapport and signed some great players.

Shankly arrived with Liverpool in the old Second Division. He rebuilt the team and won the second division Championship before bringing home all those trophies just listed.

The team switched to an all-red strip and the club’s anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone (made famous by Scouser Gerry Marsden) arrived and remains emotionally sung today by the present supporters.

Shankly was such a big distinctive personality with famous quotes: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you it’s much more serious than that.”

“Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor!”

“If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtain.”

“If you are first, you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.”

”I am a people’s man – only the people matter.”

“ We murdered them 0-0.”

“The trouble with referees is that they know the rules but they do not know the game.”

Yes, Shankly was a character. The Scot would rasp out these fanatical sayings. He absolutely lived for the game.

He looked after the fans, replying to all the many letters he received at the training ground – and was said to even give out match tickets to some.

The outstanding players he signed for Liverpool including Emlyn Hughes, Ian St John and one of England’s biggest stars, Kevin Keegan – all of whom revered Shankly and had plenty of affectionate stories about the name that lives on in football.

Shankly signed 36 players and oversaw the leaving of 51.

His signings also included Gordon Milne, later to manage both Leicester City and Coventry City, Ron Yeats, Peter Thompson, Geoff Strong, Ray Clemence, Tony Hateley, Alex Lindsay, Larry Lloyd, Steve Heighway, Roger Hunt, John Toshack, Jimmy Case and Ray Kennedy, just to mention a few Liverpool legends.

Among those sold, one was of special interest to me as a schoolboy. Dave Hickson was sold to Cambridge City for £1,000 in July 1961.

I watched Hickson (who was an Everton legend from 1948-1955 when he briefly joined Aston Villa) as a 16-year-old schoolboy.

He played for Cambridge City, whose ground then was in Milton Road – the same road that I grew up on. Hickson only played a handful of games.

He also went on to play for Tranmere Rovers, making him a player for all three Merseyside clubs!

I caught up with him many years later when our cameras were at Everton for match coverage. He was there as an Everton ambassador.

Back to Shankly. I used to interview him when Star Soccer (the Midlands Sunday highlights show I presented for many years) used to share coverage of matches such as Liverpool v Birmingham at Anfield.

In those days, if a player was sent off, he and his manager would have to appear at an FA Disciplinary Committee to decide how many, if any, matches the player would be suspended for.

One such hearing involved Larry Lloyd at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham.

Shankly asked me at ATV if we could supply the footage of the incident, which I agreed.

Shankly and Lloyd duly arrived at our studios in Bridge Street to watch the tape in our video editing suites.

Much to the engineers’ amazement, he started to move them around as players while addressing Lloyd as to what to say in his later defence.

I said to my chief operator Graham Thompson: “Welcome to the world of Bill Shankly”– the latter quite oblivious to the fact that our staff were trying to edit other programming such as drama!

Shankly often used to threaten to resign while pursuing a pay rise or other things.

In the end, the Liverpool board took his bluff and accepted it.

He shocked the football world and his own players and Liverpool fans when he announced his retirement from the game a few weeks after winning the 1974 FA Cup final.

He seemed to be a lost soul after that as he embarked on after-dinner speaking.

I recall hosting such an event at a Birmingham public house. It was either the Mackadown or The Hunters Moon.

Perhaps an older reader was there and can recall which one. Shankly had his notes in an old paper. I was thinking he should have still been in football.

Bill Shankly OBE, the founding father of the modern Liverpool football success, died in Liverpool on September 29, 1981 aged 68. His ashes were scattered on the Anfield pitch at the Kop End.

The club erected a 15-foot high Shankly Gates in front of the Anfield Road stand. He was a folk hero to the supporters.

Next week, I will write about working with his assistant Bob Paisley, who reluctantly became his successor in the hot seat and became the most successful of all the Liverpool managers.

Before that on Tuesday my sports comment column, in association with Utilita Energy, in both the Birmingham Mail and Coventry Telegraph as well as online.