It is no surprise Bill Shankly’s first great Liverpool team featured a strong influence from north of the border.
The Ayrshire-born managerial icon was as proud a Scot as they come and it is well documented how the transformative signings in the summer of 1961 of Ron Yeats from Dundee United and Ian St John from Motherwell - once, with the help of new finance director Eric Sawyer, the manager had persuaded the Anfield board to loosen the purse strings - were crucial in helping drag the Reds out of the doldrums of the Second Division and provided the foundations of the dynasty of success which would follow.
Both Yeats and St John would enjoy long careers on Merseyside and be regarded as legendary figures for their achievements in the red shirt but they were joined for a time at Liverpool by one of their less-heralded compatriots who played an important role in the squad on and off the pitch and would go on to inadvertently influence arguably the club’s greatest ever player, Scottish or otherwise, that Anfield was the place for him.
