The soul of Kevin Keegan

I like to see demonstrations of lateral thinking. 

I suppose it is because it is not anything that I am good at. The skill, which it is, makes for a good twist in a movie or in the pages of a thriller or mystery novel. Others find it a natural thought process to enrich and ease their everyday lives. In stark contrast I just wallow about with no practical ideas. I think the kind word for my inability to think laterally is a plodder. 

So when I see or hear of a particularly adept example of this trait I have every admiration and fascination. 

Just imagine then the thrill of coming across the following classic piece of lateral thinking from the 1970’s that combined so many things that I was enthused about in my childhood at that time, those being Kevin Keegan and Liverpool Football Club. 

There was quite a tenuous association between me as a footie mad eight year old and the pocket dynamo that was Keegan. As a family we had just moved to North Lincolnshire from the depths of Suffolk. I had scoured my football magazines, mainly the Shoot New Season Edition to see if there was a League Team in the new area for me to support having been somewhat spoiled for choice in East Anglia with Ipswich and Norwich. 

To the east was Grimsby but closest at about 8 miles from our new home town was Scunthorpe who at that time had a team languishing in, I seem to recall, the lowest tier of English football, the old Fourth Division. 

My father took me to my first ever proper football match in the 1971 to 1972 season , Scunthorpe United v some other lowly team. 

Kevin Keegan played for United, their nickname being The Iron because of the huge steelworks that dominated the skyline but unfortunately for me both he and Ray Clemence had just, in the pre season, made a big money move to the mighty Liverpool. 

A tenuous link indeed but to me it was very exciting.

So Kevin Keegan was hot property on Merseyside joining  a team that in the 1970’s dominated domestic and European football propelling their quiet and unassuming manager, Bob Paisley to the position of British footballs greatest. 

Paisley showed that amongst his many talents was lateral thinking. 

In 1971 Paisley was the club physio and assistant to the charismatic Bill Shankly .

Kevin Keegan suffered from a serious problem with his feet soon after signing for Liverpool and complained incessantly of discomfort which threatened to affect all aspects of his game from training to match play and recovery. The dour and no-nonsense Shankly had little time for players nursing what he regarded as a minor injury and with Keegan’s strange complaint he showed intense irritation to the extent that he accused the 20 year old to his face of being a malingerer, in that he felt the player was pretending. 

It fell to Bob Paisley to apply his methodical and lateral thinking to the problem and to try to find a solution to keep a key member of the first team fit and firing on all cylinders. 

He quizzed Keegan about his lifestyle and whether any factors could be contributing to his malady. 

The questions included whether he lived in an attic with lots of stairs, did he walk up a lot of hills, did he go horse riding or even skiing. 

By the process of painstaking elimination the most probable cause of the discomfort appeared to be Keegan’s brand new car, a bright green sporty Ford Capri Coupe. This was a car of choice for the discerning young football stars in the game in that era.  

Paisley ordered the vehicle to be investigated which meant lifting the carpets for any awkward angled aspects of the floorpan or an odd driving stance. Joe Fagan, a former player now on the Liverpool staff sat in the drivers seat and in pressing down on the pedals found that the clutch pedal was stiff and unyielding. 

Keegan stopped driving the car and sure enough the issue with his feet cleared up and in honours and achievements of man and team, the rest is, well, football history. 

(Source; Quiet Genius by Ian Herbert on Bob Paisley- Bloomsbury Sport 2017)