Feature60 years ago today: The start of Roy Evans' all-encompassing Liverpool career
Not many people have seen as much happen at Liverpool as Roy Evans has.
As a player, as a coach and later as the manager of his boyhood club, he witnessed it all. League championships, European trophies, domestic cups, highs and lows and everything in between.
"The luckiest Liverpudlian ever!" he once called himself, and today marks 60 years since Evans' love affair with the Reds started, as he signed on as an apprentice under the great Bill Shankly.
"He came round to the house and chatted to my mum and dad," Evans remembered. "They didn't need much persuading, to be fair!"
A quiet, unassuming full-back, Evans would have to wait more than six years to make his professional debut, which came in a 3-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday at Anfield in March 1970. He would go on to make 10 further appearances, the last coming away at Burnley on Boxing Day 1973.
Six months later, after Shankly had shocked the football world by announcing his resignation, Bob Paisley offered Evans the chance to move onto Liverpool's coaching staff as reserve-team manager. He was just 25 years old.
"I refused about three times because I wanted to be a player," he said, but after liaising with friends, including teammates such as Tommy Smith, he decided to take the plunge.
"Bob reckoned I could make a decent living playing elsewhere if I wanted," he remembers. "But I just wanted to stay at Liverpool."
And so Evans became the youngest coach in the Football League. "We have not made an appointment for the present but for the future," Paisley told the press. "One day he will be our manager."
Those words would turn out to be prophetic. Evans won seven Central League titles in nine years as reserve boss, and would go on to spend 24 years on the staff at Liverpool, working under Paisley, Joe Fagan, Sir Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness before, in March 1994 and after a stint as both assistant manager and interim boss, succeeding the latter in the top job at Anfield.
Twelve months later he guided the Reds to League Cup glory, beating Bolton Wanderers at Wembley thanks to two Steve McManaman goals, and in his four full seasons as manager he would oversee finishes of fourth, third, fourth and third again.
That side, with McManaman supplying the likes of Robbie Fowler, Stan Collymore and a young Michael Owen, was often thrilling, but lost an FA Cup final to Manchester United in 1996 and failed to turn promising positions into title wins in both 1995-96 and 1996-97, finishing behind United on both occasions.
"The only regret I have is that we didn't win the title in 1996," Evans has said. "I felt that side was good enough but in the end we just fell short."
The 1996 cup final loss, meanwhile, became infamous for the sight of Liverpool's players wearing white suits at Wembley, a decision for which they, and Evans, would be heavily criticised.
"The white suits didn't cost us the game," he has since said. "They were what they were. They were offered by Armani and they picked the colour.
"As a coaching staff or as the manager maybe I should have said, 'Listen lads, if you wear them and you get beat…' but I didn't.
"We [the staff] wore navy and they wore the white ones, and that's been held against them for a long time but I know for sure that didn't cost us the cup final. What happened that day was neither team turned up but Manchester United scored the goal and we didn't, unfortunately."
In the summer of 1998, Liverpool took the unprecedented step of appointing joint-managers, with Gerard Houllier brought in alongside Evans.
The experiment proved to be short-lived, Evans resigning in tears after a 3-1 home defeat by Tottenham Hotspur on November 12, 1998.
"It is difficult to do but it is not about personalities, it is about Liverpool Football Club," he said at his leaving press conference. "I don't know what I will do, I just want to get this over today.
"I cannot imagine working at another club. I am 50, not exactly old and not ready for the dustbin. I want to relax a bit. I want this club to get on – that is the most important thing."
Evans would never manage again in the Premier League. He enjoyed spells with both Fulham and Swindon Town, as well as a stint as assistant manager to Liverpool legend John Toshack with the Wales national team, and as No.2 to Brian Carey with Wrexham.
His name, though, remains synonymous with an era of glorious success at Anfield.
"I was there for 35 years, and during that time Liverpool won over 40 major trophies," he has said. "It was nice that they made me a part of all that.
"That's what the Boot Room was all about. It's not about a room, it's about the people in it and the quality of those people, and to be a part of that was the best school I ever went to in my life."