Bill Shankly was a straight-talking man of many words and was rarely reluctant to use them to make his point.
Quite what he would have conjured up to describe Erling Haaland is anyone’s guess but doubtless he would have been full of admiration for the young Norwegian’s scoring prowess. The manager who created legends at Liverpool in the 1960s knew a thing or two about great strikers and could bear personal witness to the best of the lot, the one whose record every striker dreams of beating.
In the prime of his playing career at Preston North End in the 1930s, Shankly saw the final First Division years of Dixie Dean, the Everton forward who scored 60 league goals in the 1927-28 season, moving Shankly many years later to offer his opinion of the man from Birkenhead, who became his great friend.
