Brian never subscribed to Bill Shankly’s exaggerated belief that football was more important than life and death. He nonetheless respected and liked Shankly, regarding him unequivocally as the archetypal ‘football man’. He also had an empathy with managers who shared his aesthetic beliefs about how the game ought to be played. ‘Jim Smith paid me one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever got,’ he said. ‘He told me that whenever he was feeling low, he’d watch a video of one of our matches because we played football the way it ought to be played.’