Scottish inside-left forward Willie Fagan was a promising 19-year-old when he joined Preston from Celtic in October 1936. Fagan as well as Bill Shankly were in Preston's line-up who lost 3-1 in the 1937 FA Cup final against Sunderland. The following October Fagan joined Liverpool, after only one year's stay at Deepdale, for £8,000, a record deal for a teenager. Fagan went straight into the Liverpool team, playing in 36 consecutive matches to the end of the season and scoring nine times. He only missed three League games in 1938/39, scoring 14 goals and played in the opening three fixtures of the 1939/40 season before World War II caused the League programme to be abandoned and Fagan's Liverpool career to be severely curtailed at the age of 22. Unlike some of his colleagues, Fagan was young enough to re-establish himself at Anfield when League football resumed in 1946. Fagan was offered a deal by second division Bradford Park Avenue but refused to move which proved beneficial for the player and Liverpool. Fagan scored seven goals in 18 appearances to qualify for a well-deserved championship medal in 1947. Fagan was called on sporadically, mostly due to injury, in the 1947/48 and 1948/49 seasons and looked on his way into the Third Division but the inside-left position had been problematic for Liverpool and George Kay decided to give Fagan a chance in the opening game of the 1949/50 season. Fagan's Liverpool's career was resurrected once more and his four goals in the FA Cup helped the Reds to their first-ever Wembley final in 1950 which they lost to Arsenal. The Daily Dispatch was impressed by Fagan's form and voted him the Outstanding Footballer of 1949. Approaching his mid-30's by the time the next season opened, Fagan's Anfield career was nearing its close and he played his final game for the club against Huddersfield on the first day of September 1951. If the war hadn't taken so many playing years away from him, there seems little doubt that a fine Liverpool career would have been a great one.
Fagan was hired as player-coach of Distillery in Northern Ireland but a troublesome knee injury meant he was only there in the job for a couple of weeks before returning to Liverpool. On 16 July 1952 Fagan was appointed player-manager at Weymouth in the Southern league. Liverpool held his registration form so no other Football League club could obtain his signature without their permission, while available to play for a non-league side. Auburn-haired Fagan revealed in 1950 that he had hoped from an early age to be an opera singer. He, however, ended up in prison following the end of his football career! He was not an inmate but a senior officer at a facility for young offenders on the isle of Portland in the English Channel. He retired in 1982 and died in Northampton aged 75 in 1992.