With the sort of delicious irony that only football seems able to serve up, it was Harry Catterick who recommended Joe Fagan to the powers that be at Anfield as their new assistant trainer in May 1958. Catterick, destined to be manager of arch rivals Everton in the following decade, was manager of Lancashire side Rochdale and Fagan was his eager young trainer, anxious to move up the footballing ladder and hopeful of a return to the city of his birth.
In the January of 1958, a new head coach, Reuben Bennett, had been brought in to give struggling manager Phil Taylor some much needed assistance. Together with Bennett and Liverpool stalwart Bob Paisley, who was now acting as physio, Fagan would form the pool of resources from which a new regime that was destined to transform the club would spring.
But these were desperate times for Liverpool. Languishing in the old Second Division, they were just months away from the most humiliating defeat in their history, an FA Cup exit at the hands of non-league Worcester City. Furthermore, star man Billy Liddell was nearing the end of an illustrious playing career. The holy grail of promotion to Divsion One without Liddell's services seemed more and more unlikely.
The magic missing component that would tap the gathering well of talent would not arrive for a further eighteen months when Phil Taylor, beginning to ail under the strain of trying to return the club to the top flight, resigned in November 1959.
Chairman T.V. Williams offered the vacant position to Bill Shankly and the club's fortunes were transformed.
Shankly, a long time admirer of Fagan, reassured each of the back room staff that their positions were safe as long as they showed complete loyalty to him and the club. Fagan, working as assistant trainer, became a key figure in the burgeoning culture of what became known as the 'Boot Room'.
It was Fagan who first kitted out the small boot room along the changing room corridor with upturned empty beer crates so that he, Bob and Reuben would have a quiet place to sit and chew the fat. The beer crates came courtesy of Paul Orr (later to become Lord Mayor of Liverpool) who had given Joe some of the 'black stuff' as a thank you for allowing his amateur team, Guiness Export, to receive treatment at Anfield.
It was at this time that Fagan began to document the daily goings on at Anfield and Melwood, a system that would build into an encyclopaedic volume of facts and figures referred to over and over again by the various coaches and trainers at Anfield in the following 20 years.
In 1971 he was appointed reserve team coach and set in motion a run of 9 Central League titles in 10 years (carried out largely by Roy Evans). In 1974, following the shock resignation of Shankly, Joe Fagan stepped up to first team trainer as Bob Paisley moved into the managerial hot seat.
A further Boot Room reshuffle saw Fagan promoted to assistant manager in 1979. Four short years later he finally became manager on the resignation of Bob Paisley.
Assistant Trainer from 1958
Reserve Team Coach from 1971
1st Team Trainer from 1974
Assistant Manager from 1979