They were born four years and thirty miles apart. They shared a position - right-half, as it was then called. It might even be argued that one replaced the other in the national team, although that is a stretch. There was also a brief flirtation with the hewing of coal, if flirt and black rock can be synonymous, before football let them escape, first as players and then as managers, after which they would also share a club, but not at the same time nor in the same capacity. And many words have been written about their lives, their personalities and achievements, to which I can realistically hope to add little, which is just as well since my interest in them lies elsewhere, in philosophies, not the home-spun ones of two men made-good through football but those of the football they grew up with and carried with them in their interpretation of their right ways to play.

Matt Busby's route was from local football with Alpine Villa, and then a junior team not local to his birthplace of Orbiston by Bellshill, so Motherwell, Hamilton or even Airdrie, but a Hibernian, Denny Hibernian by Falkirk. Matt Busby was raised and remained a staunch Catholic. And it was from Denny that at just short of eighteen years-old he went not into the Scottish senior game but, as seemed increasingly the way, directly south to Manchester, but City not United. An offered explanation is that Busby had had trials with both Rangers and Celtic but in the former case perhaps the name had sown initial religious confusion and in the latter disquiet that Rangers appeared to be the young man's first choice. Whilst the first part of the story might have some bearing the second probably does not with the alternative version being that Celtic wanted him to sign but were to late with an offer, some say just ten minutes too late. How history might have been changed. Nor even then would Busby's path be directly into the first team squad. Officially that would not be until nineteen and only after some thought that he with other family might emigrate to America, where "soccer" was ostensibly booming. How history might have been otherwise once more.

However, Shankly's route into the professional game was, whether actually or potentially, nowhere near so exotic. Whilst Manchester City had at the time of Busby's arrival been doing reasonably well, finishing third, albeit in the Second Division, in 1932 when Shankly had moved into the senior game, also directly south from Cronberry Eglinton, a village team a dozen miles or so from his home in the now erased Glenbuck, it had been to Carlisle United in the bottom five of Division Three North. Moreover, on the face of it his arrival had made no difference. In the season after his arrival Carlisle finished a place worse off, whereas in the season after Busby's arrival City had achieved promotion to the top flight. Yet something must have been seen in "Shanks". After a single season he was plucked from the shores of the Solway Firth and transported both further south to the banks of the Ribble and up a division at Preston North End, where a team essentially of Scots was being assembled not by a canny manager, English or otherwise, for the club had none, but by what has be recognised in terms of Scots football as one of the most enlightened, English, Club Management Committees ever.

In fact Shankly in 1933 was was to be one of its first examples of that enlightenment's effect. Preston would win promotion from the Second to the First Division at the end of that season. Nor would he be the last. By 1936 of fourteen first teamers half were from north of the border. Indeed in 1937 in losing the FA Cup final to Sunderland it was seven of the Preston eleven on the field that day plus by then a Scots manager, Tommy Muirhead, who albeit was just as soon on his way, and with Sunderland not far behind in its Scottish-ness with five more at the other end of the pitch and also a Scot in charge. And in 1938 when for the first time for almost fifty years in beating Huddersfield Preston finally took the same trophy it was again not only seven but with in comparison with the previous season four of them new faces. 

On winning the FA Cup Bill Shankly had been twenty-four. The end of the Second War in Europe was declared on his 30th birthday and, although he would continue to turn out for Preston until 1949,  there is no doubt his prime playing years had been lost to the hostilities. There also seems to be little doubt that, although all his playing career had been entirely spent in England he was both initially schooled in and would be surrounded for its entirety by the Scottish game, indeed steeped in it. Even in his last season playing fully thirteen of a Preston squad of twenty-six had "come south".

However, for Busby it was on the face of it substantially different. When in 1929 he had fully arrived at Manchester City just three of the club's squad were Scots, then three the following year too and four the one after that. But there was among the tartan contingent one special player in not just one but two. He was Jimmy McMullan. A year earlier from left-half he had captained Scotland, the Wembley Wizard Scots, to rout of England and was the epitome of ball-friendly Scots half-back play. But there was something else. McMullan was not just also Catholic but Denny-born and a formerly of Denny Hibernian. And this Denny connection continued. In 1932 inside-forward Malcom Comrie joined and he too had been born in the town and turned out for the same team. It meant there were for a season three of the same ilk forming what today might be seen as a mid-field triangle, six Scots in the squad in all and even with the retirement of McMullan the following year it would remain more or less so until Busby moved on.

The move was 1936, he was twenty-six and the journey he took was a short one, if  not down the Mersey then the Ship Canal, to Liverpool. It can best be seen as more or less sideways but a little less more than more. City that season had finished ninth in the First Division, Liverpool fourth from bottom. However, at Anfield the Scots influence was if anything stronger than at Maine Road and would continue to be. Over the next four seasons there were seven or eight in the squad with for two of them, Tom Bradshaw. He was a big, powerful, defensive centre-half, the first of that type of player to have featured in the national team, yet who would gain just a single cap. But what a cap it was. He had played with Jimmies either side, Jimmy Gibson to the right and none other than Jimmy McMullan on his left and the game was that 1928 Wembley Wizards match. 

So where does this all take us. It is to and beyond both shared and distinct influences on both Busby and Shankly from their background's and playing days that they had no alternative but to carry with them as they moved into management. Busby was the first, in 1945, , aged just thirty-six, and back to Manchester, but not to City but United and not initially in the First Division. The club would play the season  in the Football League North and finish fourth. Only the following season, as football returned to some post-War normality, would the First Division return and Manchester United finish second. And, somewhat frustratingly it would be the same in 1947-48, again in 1948-49 and once more in 1949-50. True in 1948 the FA Cup had been Old Trafford's but only in 1951-52 was the championship finally won, then followed by a dropping-off by an aging team. The famous re-building was necessary. 

But what of the Manchester United teams in the interim? The truth is that they started as English. It was not until 1946 that first Scot arrived. He was the ex-international Jimmy Delaney, already aged thirty-two but who on the wing nevertheless that season played thirty-nine times and the following one forty-two more, by when he had been joined by a, a single, compatriot, Tommy Lowrie, a reserve wing-half. Then the next season Johnny Downie arrived, the season after Tommy Bogan and then it was 1950 and there were four, of whom, however, whilst numbers seemed to be on the increase just two were first team regulars.

And in 1950-51 the picture was much the same. True there were now six Scots, two wingers, two inside-forwards and two wing-halves, the new men being  Eddie McIlvenny, the Greenock-born captain of the USA national team, and Harry McShane, the father of actor, Ian McShane. However, frankly all but one, Downie, were still reserves and basically passing through. In 1951-52 and 52-53 the number in squads of twenty-five and thirty respectively had fallen to two. McIlvenny was one of those who had departed and, whilst  McShane was still there, indeed, in 1953-54 he was actually the only one left standing, he was with five appearances hardly a first-team regular and also on his way the following season. In fact it was only two seasons later in 1956-7 that again there was even one Scot on the United books, seventeen year-old Alex Dawson, and even in the two seasons post the Munich air-crash just two with the arrival of full-back, Tommy Heron, but only as cover.  It meant that in Matt Busby's first decade and a half in charge at Old Trafford, despite his Scottish schooling, he had hardly drawn on any talent from the old country. It is curious, in part only explained by the concentration of the club under him on bringing through youth players, which inevitably means a catchment area more local to Manchester, with perhaps the other major factor being the club's extensive and very successful scouting network in Ireland, Northern and Southern.

On the other hand Bill Shankly when he entered management in 1949 it was via a return to Carlisle in the Third Division North so two tiers down and in fifteenth place at that, and to a squad the previous year of twenty-seven, of which seven were Scots, to which in his first season he added four, so eleven, in twenty-eight. The proportions speak for themselves and became, if anything, more pronounced the following year. The squad was trimmed to twenty-four, so by four, the number of Scots just one to ten. And an affect on results seems equally apparent. In the season prior to Shankly's arrival Carlisle had finished fifteenth. In his first in charge they were 9th and in the second, 3rd.

However, Shankly's sojourn at Carlisle was in length to be nothing like Shankly's at Manchester United.  In 1951 he was on his way yet still within the same division and to relegated Grimsby. And the same patterns seems to have been replicated, at least significantly to begin with. In the season before his arrival the Grimsby squad had seen six Scots in thirty, a fifth. In Shankly's first season it became nine in twenty-six, almost a third, then ten in twenty-eight. Grimsby would finish 2nd, missing promotion by three points, then a still creditable fifth. Only in his third and final season did the Scots element fall, to seven in thirty and coincidently or not Grimsby found itself in 17th place and Shankly moved on once more, somewhat curiously to the club three places lower in the same division, Workington Town.

It is said that Workington was attractive to its new manager because it was nearer to both Shankly and his wife's roots in Scotland, Be that as it may. But perhaps there was also a Scottish football element. The club had been run with a tight squad of twenty-one. In that there was to be no change. Moreover, nine had been Scots in 1953-4, the season before his arrival, so now 40%, and in the year he was there were small changes in personnel but none at all in numbers.

But as it happened the Shankly stay in the Cumbrian seaside town was to be short. After just a season, in which he had still taken the club from 20th to 8th in the Third Division North, he chose both to step down and up. The upward step was to the Second Division, but to a club, Huddersfield Town, that had just been relegated from the First. The downward one was as Assistant to fellow Scot and Preston and Scotland team-mate, Andy Beattie. Beattie had two years in his first season taken Huddersfield from the second to the first tier, then seen them to third place in the top flight, then mid-table twelfth, at which point perhaps the call had gone out to Shankly for help. He came in as reserve team coach and, frankly, to little effect. At the end of the 1955-56 Huddersfield was relegated, albeit on goal difference, a place below Aston Villa and just two below Preston, Beattie then resigned and Shankly was asked to step up.

It is fact that Bill Shankly's promotion immediately saw a doubling in the number of Scots in the Huddersfield squad. But that simple statistic is misleading and possibly ultimately problematic. There had been two. There were now four and for the additional pair, both forwards, he had turned firstly to youth, and secondly not to his usual source, the Central Belt, but Aberdeen. One was twenty-year old Les Massie, who would spend the next decade at the Yorkshire club. The other was a sixteen year old, one Denis Law. Both went almost straight into the first team. In fact all four of the Scots were starters throughout Shankly's time in charge as the squad was trimmed from twenty-six to twenty-two and the team finished respectively twelfth, ninth and fourteenth, so little progress. And it was probably this lack of progress, which Shankly officially put down to the club's lack of ambition but may well have had more to do with his ideas of squad make-up that seems to have been the main factor at the end of the 1958-59 season firstly in being prepared to consider elsewhere and secondly half-way through the season accept an alternative offer.

That offer came from Liverpool and  was perhaps a repetition of Grimsby/Workington except with longevity. His new club was again in the same division but the previous May finished ten places higher, notably in a season that would also see Grimsby relegated, and had under the previous manager, Phil Taylor, who had put in place both players and backroom staff, then flirted every year with promotion but ultimately remained a top-flight wallflower. 

Thus Shankly arrived at a club where he could in part just take over what there was and also require and request change, notably in the facilities, at Anfield itself and at the training ground. And change he got but with little result. In his first season the club continued to do no more than flirt and in the second too, finishing third in both with squads that, having inherited three, contained four Scots. In fact the notable changes were not in the Scottish contingent but elsewhere. The first was in squad size. In the first three seasons as had also been the pattern elsewhere it went from twenty-seven, to twenty-one, eight left, two came in, and then to eighteen but with the the arrival of several new Scots, with commensurate departures. The effect was to increase the Scots concentration from just under one in seven to one in just over four with the resultant change in philosophy. And the second was the arrival of one of the newcomers in particular, Gordon Milne.

Now any Scot who knows names would look at Gordon and raise an eyebrow then look at Milne and raise the other. And in this case with the best of reason. Whilst Milne had been born in Preston and signed from the town's side he was, indeed still is, not without pedigree, roots or contacts. His father was Jimmy Milne, professional footballer and Dundee-born. His mother was Jessie Milne, also from Dundee. And Jimmy Milne, left-half, had been a one-club man, from 1932 to 1939 notching two-hundred and thirty appearances not either of his home-town clubs but for none other than Preston North End; that club again. Indeed, he been there when a certain Bill Shankly had arrived, with the pair of them two thirds of the club's half-back engine right up to the losing Cup Final of 1938. In fact Jimmy Milne would even go on to manage Preston from 1961 to 1968, almost precisely in the period that that Shankly was "just down the road".

So it was that at the beginning of the 1961-62 season with Gordon Milne not in his father's position but Shankly's and at twenty-four coming into his prime, four Scots in the squad and all in the first team and a Boot Room of Glenbuck's Shankly, half-back and front-man, Liverpudlian Joe Fagan, half-back and reserve team coach, Durham's Bob Paisley, also half-back and tactician, and Aberdeen's Reuben Bennett, goalkeeper and physical trainer, all in place that Liverpool finally took the Second Division title. And they did it by a distance The margin was eight-points. Furthermore, they were able to sustain it. The next season they finished eighth in their new home, the season after that take the title itself, the following season win the FA Cup, Manchester United topping the League, and in 1965-66 take the title once more. And it had been done throughout with four Scots in the first team and Gordon Milne in all but birth a fifth. Furthermore, behind even that facia there had been still more, less obvious but perhaps more telling change. Defensive cover was now provided by  Bobby Thomson, in midfielder it was Gordon Wallace and at forward there was Bobby Graham. From a trimmed squad that had initially been a fifth Scots it had became a quarter and was now a third.  Moreover, its first team spine had also become entirely Scots too. In goal Ayrshire's Tommy Lawrence had come through the ranks to replace Musselburgh's Bert Slater, Scot for Scot. At centre-half another Aberdonian, Ron Yeats, had replaced the Englishman, Dick White, Motherwell's Ian St. John came in place of the ageing local-boy, John Wheeler, at wing-half/inside forward, what today is midfield, and Tommy Leishman had been superseded by Willie Stevenson, Leith for Stenhousemuir.

Yet that is to to say that this Shankly's Liverpool had complete ascendancy. Their successes were  first interjected and their performances eventually overshadowed by a new iteration of Matt Busby's team from Lancashire's other city, a team that had this time slowly been built in attack around the twin talents of George Best and none other than Denis Law. And in doing so at Old Trafford there too had been something of change. From a club that in 1957 had taken the first division title with a single Scot in the squad and none in the first team a decade later it was five and three respectively and a season later in taking the European Cup, three and seven. Or put another way from a team in 1957 that was overwhelmingly English, i.e. ten of the first eleven, and in the 1960's had become increasingly Irish, Northern and Southern, whilst the number of Scots did increase over ten seasons it was only in 1967 in terms of the first team and in terms of the squad in the last two seasons of Busby's first stint to 1969 that the number of Scots finally exceeded that Irish contingent. And that remained the case in the season between his initial retirement and his 1970-71, one-year return when a maximum was reached, eight in the squad and four of those first-team regulars.  It is as if as he aged Matt Busby  increasingly felt the need to return to the same Scottish well that had produced him and frankly it proved justified. Whilst we will never know what the first English Busby Babes might have produced beyond the championships of 1956 and 1957 and recognise the Cup and the League won in 1963 and 1966 respectively with mainly an Irish input, there can be no doubt that a second league in 1967 and the European Cup the following year won with a core of Scots have to be the summit of the Bellshill boy's twenty year career.

And that in itself is something of curiosity because precisely the opposite could be argued about Bill Shankly and the tapping of his roots. After topping the First Division in 1966 in 1967 Liverpool would finish fifth behind Manchester United, Nottingham Forest, Spurs and Leeds United. It, Leeds and Forest would qualify for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup the following year but not progress beyond the third round. Leeds would take the trophy. 1967 would, coincidently or not, also see Gordon Milne leave to club. At the age of thirty he dropped a division to Blackpool. It had just been relegated and would miss an immediate return only on goal-difference. It would also see the Liverpool squad trimmed from twenty to eighteen, the beginning of the end of Willie Stevenson's Anfield career and a third place finish behind both Manchester clubs, again an Inter-City Fairs Cup place and this time an exit in the First Round on the flip of a coin to Athletic Bilbao. And this trophy-less period would continue until, whilst in the 1970-71 season there were still six Scots in the squad, in the first team only one was left standing, Ron Yeats, and it would be his last season. 

And post-Yeats the Scottish presence would diminish further still. In the 1971-72 season, whilst there was still one, but only just, in the first team, Brian Hall, Glasgow-born but raised in Lancashire and Lancashire football, now six in the squad became three. Moreover, as the league was regained in 1973 and finally there was success in Europe, in the UEFA Cup, it fell to just two, Hall, now often a substitute, replaced in the starting eleven by Peter Cormack. Only in 1973-4 did he make something of a come-back, the two playing together for much of the season and in winning the FA Cup.

Yet just two, or one and half, Scots in a Liverpool team in the Shankly era must be seen in context. True it was not one of the three previous seasons but neither was it the four and a half of a decade earlier and seems to point to Shankly's native well seeming either more or less to have run dry or what there was preferring elsewhere,  not least Old Trafford with its change of ethos. Perhaps that is even one of the reasons for what looks like the Glenbuck man's somewhat precipitous and perhaps later regretted decision at the end of the 1973-74 more or less to walk away from what, although it had never been exactly the "the team of the Macs", might have been called "Macs-light" and now was no longer and would remain so. In 1974-5 again only Cormack and Hall were first picks, the next season in regaining the league title even they were marginal and in 1976-77, the year of league once more, the European Cup and the Super Cup Hall was gone and Cormack did not play. 

It might have seemed the new stewardship of Bob Paisley had signalled a change of direction but it proved to be temporary. In 1977 Kevin Keegan moved on, to Hamburg. Liverpool did finally go north to bring in Kenny Dalglish, already a star name, from Celtic and he would be an ever present. But that was not all. More quietly but just as significantly the spine of the time was reconstructed along Shankly lines. Graeme Souness via Edinburgh was bought from Middlesbrough and Alan Hansen from Partick Thistle. Both would be phased in. All three would be features in the first team the following year and for four years more, during which time they would be joined first by Steve Nichol from Ayr United and Gary Gillespie from Falkirk, then John Wark via Glasgow from Ipswich, back to six in a squad of eighteen, a third. And from 1981 again from Middlesbrough by another who got away, Craig Johnston. Whilst South African-born, Australian Johnston, clearly eligible for Scotland through name alone but also his grandfather rejected (foolishly) Jock Stein's overtures and wastefully effectively dingied by England, with him in the Scots attacking mid-field role Liverpool in a decade, the decade either side of Shankly's death in 1881, would take six league titles, an FA Cup, two European Cups and assorted other trophies.

And Matt Busby, in outliving Bill Shankly by a dozen years, would also see his team with an ageing squad and a troublesome George Best  and a Denis Law in his thirties first stagnate, then struggle and fall.  Even turning again to Scotland for help, indeed to the then Scotland manager, Tommy Docherty, did not initially help. At the end of the 1972-73 season Manchester United with just two Scots in the starting eleven was relegated for the first time in almost forty years. Yet Docherty did not go. There was clearly a plan. There was rebuilding. In the year of demotion the number of Scots in what was increasingly the new man's United had been first increased from seven to eleven in part by increasing the squad size from twenty-four to twenty-nine, so almost 40%. Moreover the next year whilst that first number reduced, to nine, the second did too, to twenty-five, so no change in the ratio but more notably still the number on the first team had increased from two to five. A majority English first eleven had become 50/50 English/Scots and the following year, that of promotion back into the top flight with nine Scots in now twenty-four, the reversal would be complete. The first eleven would have six from north of the border, Buchan and Houston, Forsyth and Macari, Willie Morgan and Jim McCalliog. 

On returning to the top flight McCalliog and Morgan moved on, the former before the end of the season and with Willie Morgan's differences with Tommy Docherty well documented. But the other main four remained even as two more were lost from the squad.  And thus the balance remained, even as Docherty was gone over the Brown Affair and was replaced by the Englishman, Dave Sexton. Indeed, that balance was only to change in 1981. In part that was due to Ron Atkinson's arrival in Sexton's stead, in part by natural ageing and in part by a simple factor outwith football altogether. On 1st January the United Kingdom had joined the Common Market. Continental players were legally entitled to seek employment with British clubs and, although the football league blocked them until 1978, they did. Arnold Muhren arrived at Ipswich from Ajax in 1978, Frans Thijssen from Twente the following year and in 1982 Muhren was recruited to Manchester United by Atkinson but it was hardly a turning-point. Liverpool had none at the time. But the Dane, Jesper Olsen, followed in 1984 and fellow-Dane, Jan Molby, would arrive at Anfield. True there was creep but not revolution.  That would have to wait until 1995 and the Bozman Ruling, the repercussions of which felt from 1996 onwards, and at which point at Old Trafford Scot, Alex Ferguson, had just two Scots in his squad, none in his first team, but two from Continental Europe, both in the eleven. Times were changing and how. And at Anfield times would change too. Englishman Roy Evans had one, nought, nought and one respectively but within the decade it would be one, none, at least three and thirteen or more and the new manager himself would be French. Sacre Blue and Scottish game roll in a self-dug grave!