Peter Thompson interview from LFC Magazine, March 2010

“I was a wonderboy as a kid, a has-been when I was 19 and a champion of England and full international at the age of 21.”

BOB PAISLEY reckoned Peter Thompson was one of the most naturally gifted players he’d ever worked with.
The left-winger both infuriated and delighted Bill Shankly while entertaining thousands on the Kop.
In 416 appearances he netted 54 times and played a huge part in our success during the 1960s.

When you were just a kid every club in the country was rumoured to want you. Why did you choose Preston?
People always ask me why I went there. I’d played for England schoolboys and went to loads of clubs on trial, all over England.
My dad, who was a joiner, took me to all the different towns and cities.
He loved it because he never had any money and we’d be put up in a hotel and wined and dined.
I eventually told him we’d have to decide who to sign for. But he was in no rush.
When I went back to talk to the Preston the manager said: ‘I know Man United want you. They’ve got Duncan Edwards and all those lads in the first team.
Their second team has plenty of B internationals, their third team has loads of U23 internationals and their fourth team has youth internationals and they have plenty of schoolboy internationals too. You might get through that lot.
Here at Preston we have a fabulous first team but they’re all old. We have no reserves and we have no money’.
So after thinking about it I decided to go with Preston. They had as good a team as Liverpool or United.
It turned out to be the correct choice because some of the players retired and I got to play in the first division on a regular basis from the age of just 17.

Tom Finney was there at that time. Did you have much contact with him?
I was only 15 when I first signed and I met him every day.
My hometown of Carlisle never had a good team so I’d grown up without any real football hero. I’d always admired Stanley Matthews and Tom because they were wingers and Tom became a hero to me.
I remember having a poor game and getting loads of criticism afterwards. I spoke to him about it and told him I was going to change my style of play.
He told me not to change anything. He said my one great strength was my ability to go past men and I should play as I always had. It was good advice.

Matthews and Finney are regarded as two of the best players to have graced English football. Who was better?
For me it was Tom. Stan was great on the wing but Tom could play on either flank or up front and still be brilliant. As well as being skilful he was a great header of the ball too.

Preston suffered relegation at the end of 1960/61. What went wrong?
The first team players were all getting old but we had a decent youth set up and reached the final of the Youth Cup in 1960, something the club had never done before.
We faced Chelsea who had a great side, managed to get a draw down there and thought we’d done the hard part.
A crowd of around 25,000 turned up for the return game but we lost 5-2 on aggregate.
Then they put all those kids in the first team because the club couldn’t afford to buy anyone. It was too many and we eventually got relegated.
When we were struggling I remember not being able to get out of my own half because I had to defend so much. Later on at Liverpool I hardly ever had to go into my own half.
It was obvious that I was going nowhere at Preston and decided to ask for a transfer.
They wouldn’t give it to me at first. Eventually they called me in and told me about Liverpool’s interest. The fee was around £40,000; a record for Liverpool back then.
I went, even though I wasn’t sure about what I was going to find. They were a big club, but nothing like they eventually became.

You scored a winning goal for Preston against Liverpool during an FA Cup 5th round tie in 1962. People said that was the reason Bill Shankly signed you?
I think Shanks had followed my progress for a while. He’d managed Carlisle, where I was born. He played for Preston too and was friendly with people there. So he knew exactly what I could do from a young age.
I don’t think me scoring against Liverpool in the cup would have convinced him to sign me. He’d seen me in a few games against his team.
The funny thing about those cup ties was Liverpool beat us pretty easily in the two league meetings that season, 3-1 at Deepdale and 4-1 at Anfield. It was like men against boys, a joke really.
When we were drawn against them in the cup at Anfield we all thought we’d get beat. We felt it was a case of how many they would score.
But Liverpool couldn’t get the ball in the net. It was the same players on both teams as in the league meetings but they just couldn’t do it. Then they came to Preston and it was 0-0 too.
So there was another replay, this time at Old Trafford. Beforehand I’d had my doubts about playing because I’d been suffering some kind of hamstring strain. Thankfully I did, and scored the winner.

It’s been described as a brilliant lob over Bert Slater. Did you mean it?
Snow was falling heavily on the night and I just lashed out at the ball. It could have killed somebody in the stand if it had hit them.
Luckily it went in. I think Shankly thought I was a goalscorer because of that, maybe I fooled him.

Rumour has it that the goal made Shankly decide to get rid of Slater, who was thought of as a bit small to be a keeper. Is there any truth in that?
I don’t know. He was small but he was a good keeper. I never got to know him because he left before I arrived at Liverpool.

With you on one wing and Ian Callaghan on the other Liverpool won the title in 1964 and ’66, and the cup in between. Who was better?
Me! No I’m joking. We were lucky because we had two good wide men. Ian Callaghan was a fabulous winger.
Sometimes I’d be struggling against a full-back. It didn’t happen very often but Ian might have been too so we’d swap over. That usually worked well.
Ian would beat players with his pace a lot of the time. I was more about trickery. So if he was up against a really quick full-back it made sense for us to swap and try something different.

How would you describe your style of play?
I was an individual and had been allowed to do my own thing from being a little boy, right throughout my career.
Some said I was greedy and I did try so hard to change. I tried but I couldn’t.
Alf Ramsey once said I played with blinkers on. A few weeks after that Shankly said ‘I think he was right, I think you do. Look up’.
Towards the end of my time at Liverpool the staff were encouraging us to play more give and go style with lots of movement. I refused to give it to anyone unless I beat five men first. Then I’d pass it.
I wish in hindsight that I could have altered my game. If I’d looked up I think I would have been a better player.
I loved when people tried to tackle me, that’s what I wanted. I could slip past them dead easily when they put their foot in. The clever ones wouldn’t though. There were times when I’d have the ball and ask them to tackle me but they always told me where to go.

Who was the toughest full-back you came up against?
Jimmy Armfield was a fabulous full-back, he was so fast.
Another was Leeds’ Paul Reaney. I always struggled against Paul. But I saw him playing against Man United and he hardly gave George Best a kick in a lot of games.
I’ve met him a few times since those days and he told me I was the winger he never wanted to play against.
There were always a few decent full-backs when we played in Europe too.

How did they try to stop you?
By threatening me every week. ‘I’ll break your back’, or ‘I’ll break your knee’ I’d hear all the time. ‘Only if you can catch me’ I’d say.
Being threatened never worried me in the slightest. It was the ones who didn’t say anything who were more cynical. I was always more weary of them.

How did you respond to those threats?
I never swore. After a few games it became obvious that players were out to hurt me because they couldn’t stop me.
So Shankly asked me what I was saying to wind them up. I told him I said ‘I’d rather you didn’t kick me if you don’t mind’.
He couldn’t believe it. ‘Are you gay?’ he asked me. ‘Tell them where to go. If you don’t I will come on and kick you’.
Right at the start of the second half the defender lunged at me again and I jumped out of the way.
Shankly was on the sideline and immediately said ‘go on’.
‘F off’ I said.
‘Louder’ he went
So I shouted it louder. It didn’t make a lot of difference. They still kicked me but I suppose it was a bit more manly.

Shanks once said being a winger was a dying art. Did you go along with that?
There are very few genuine wingers in the game now so he was probably right. Shankly was good at looking ahead.
Thankfully he was a great believer in wingers. I played 416 times for Liverpool and Cally played around 850 games so that showed he was a fan of wingers. We won trophies in that time too so there was proof it worked.

Shankly was a great manager. But did he have any weaknesses?
Tactics weren’t his strong point. Bob Paisley was the man for that.
We were preparing for a derby once and Shankly usually never missed training. But he hadn’t been around for two days.
Someone asked where he was and Bob said he was away devising a secret plan.
When he did eventually turn up we all went for a team meeting.
Shanks had all these Subbuteo men lined out on the table.
He started off saying ‘we’re going to play with four at the back and four in midfield who are going to crush the living daylights out of them’.
Then he moved to the attack and said ‘we’ll have four here and really attack the b******s’.
At that point Roger Hunt shouted: ‘I think we’ll win anyway’.
‘Of course we will,’ Shanks replied.
‘Yeah, because we’ve got 13 players and they only have 11,’ Roger laughed along with everyone else.
Shanks’ major asset was motivating people. He made everyone believe they were the best players in the world.
He’d ring you up to tell you this. He’d ring me and say ‘get to bed early son, when you play well Liverpool play well. I’m relying on you. You’re the best winger in the world’.
He probably rang Ian Callaghan and told him exactly the same.
But you believed him because a lot of football is to do with confidence. You can’t play well without it.
I went out on the pitch feeling I was the best winger. Roger thought he was the best goalscorer. Tommy Lawrence thought he was the best goalkeeper. Bob learned those type of motivational skills from him.

There were rumours that Juventus were interested in you. Did you ever consider going there?
Yeah, there were a few stories. It never went any further than the papers. We’d knocked them out of Europe and I’d played pretty well.
Shankly never called me in to ask about it. I was happy at Liverpool. I was never bothered.
Deep down, now my career is all over, I’d like to have had a go in Spain or Italy just to see how I would have done. Some players went and failed. But I was happy at Liverpool so there was no reason to move.

Do you think a different style of football might have suited you better?
I don’t know, maybe. I played against the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Spain and Holland and always did okay. So maybe that type of football could have benefited me.
At one tournament there was England, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil. Afterwards they picked the best 11 players and I was in the side.
When I came back Shankly rang me and told me the papers were calling me The White Pele. ‘I’m expecting so much from you this season,’ he said.
When the season started the team did really well but I couldn’t get going.
He called me into his office and said I was playing crap. ‘The white Pele? You’re more like the white Nelly’, he said. So maybe a different league wouldn’t have suited me.

Steve Heighway debuted in August 1970 when he replaced you against West Brom. Did you think your time at Anfield was coming to a close when he emerged?
Yeah. Steve got in my place and he was fabulous. He used to rip people apart and when I saw that I knew my days at the club were over.
I hadn’t been playing much around the time I turned 30 and went to see the boss with the hope of having the last six months of my contract paid up so I could just leave.
He refused to give me a penny. If you don’t play you don’t get money was his logic.
The situation didn’t improve. At training it would be the first team against the reserves. Those who weren’t involved in that were like outcasts. ‘Do what you want’, he’d tell us.
If he’d paid me up it would have been the end and I’d have never turned up again.
Instead I started playing for the reserves. I wasn’t liking it and told my now ex-wife that I wasn’t going in anymore. She didn’t like the idea but I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going in to take abuse from the boss.
The following week I didn’t turn up for three days. Then I didn’t go in for five days. Then I didn’t go in for two weeks. I trained every day on my own, harder than I had been doing at Liverpool.
My bad knee was supposed to swell up, but it never did. Then Bob rang me and asked: ‘where were you yesterday?’
‘Oh, did you miss me?’ I responded.
‘Shankly missed you yesterday,’ he told me.
‘I’ve not been in for a fortnight,’ I said.
‘Oh God, you’d better get in,’ Bob replied.
So I went in and explained I hadn’t turned up because I didn’t want him swearing at me.
He kept me in the reserves and I played well. Then Jimmy Armfield at Bolton came in for me. It worked out because if my contract had just been paid up and I’d finished playing I’d have been a little bitter. This way I got to continue playing.

You initially went to Bolton on loan and stayed for five years. They had been relegated to the third division in 1970/71 but eventually got back to the top flight. Was it an enjoyable experience?
It was great and allowed me to finish my career on a high. I ended up playing over 100 games for Bolton.
In the end my knees let me down. I knew they would. But I had got to 35 and was very grateful for all those years I had.
Bolton had been having a terrible time before I got there. Then they started winning and winning and winning. Shankly gave me so much praise. He said it was all down to me.
In my last season there we got promoted to the first division.
Shankly kept an earlier promise and brought a team over for my testimonial. There were 20,000 there, which was pretty good. He also paid me a glowing tribute at my testimonial dinner that night.

Injuries cut short your time at Liverpool and eventually forced you to retire. Were you upset?
Up until about 30 I was never injured. Then I got a hamstring tear and all of a sudden my knee started playing up.
Bob reckoned it was because of the way I’d played since I was five, twisting and turning, stopping and starting.
I’ve had four operations on my knees, two while playing and two since I finished.
One of them locks now and again and I was told I might end up with arthritis. But I’m okay, it hasn’t affected me that badly.

Do you get back to Anfield for many games now?
Not really, but nearly all of my family support Liverpool.
I’ve remarried and have a little boy named Conor. One day he announced he was going to support Man United.
To convince him otherwise I took him to Anfield and showed him around the museum. We met Brian Hall there and he looked after us. He got his picture taken with the European Cup too. Of course someone asked him who he followed and he still said United.
Now, I don’t know, why but he supports Blackburn. He made me promise I’d take him to watch them.
He wants to meet Sam Allardyce, who’s an old team-mate of mine. So over the next few weeks I’ll have to take him. I live in Kent now; it’s about a five-hour trip. I’ve tried to bribe him so I won’t have to go. But he was having none of it.
ENDS


THOMPSON ON THE ANFIELD FEAR FACTOR
When I played it was a fact. A great example of it was when I was away with England and we had a game with West Ham coming up.
Bobby Moore told me some of their lads were terrified about going to Anfield.
I said:’ I know why that is and I’m sure Shankly will tell you too’.
When I got to the ground that day Shankly was out in the corridor waiting for the ‘fancy Dans from London’ as he called them.
When they came in he said: ‘what a shambles you all look’ before enquiring who the goalkeeper was.
The keeper put his hand up and he said: ‘we’ll stop at five today’.
Then he asked who’s marking Peter Thompson today?
Another kid responded.
‘Shake hands with him because that’s the closest you’ll get to him. He’s the best winger in the world,” he smiled
‘Who’s marking Ian Callaghan? the best winger in the world’ he asked next.
He went through their entire team and told them they were terrified. This was a team that included Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. We hammered them; they were beaten before the kick off.
ENDS



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