Don was appointed Liverpool manager on the 5th of March 1951, but had to clear up some affairs with his former employers before he was invited to his first board meeting at Liverpool on the 21st of March.
Therefore we state that his first game in charge was on the 23rd of March.
(Similar to Bill Shankly who was appointed by Liverpool on 1st of December 1959, but could not effectively take over as manager at Liverpool until on the 14th of December).
Unfortunately, Don inherited a Liverpool team that had been stagnating in mid-table for a few seasons and a Board of Directors that didn’t seem particularly ambitious.
The Balmer/Stubbins era would shortly come to an end and the team relied too much on the mercurial Billy Liddell, who had become so important and influential that some supporters nicknamed the club “Liddellpool” in his honour.
But even Liddell couldn’t stop the team’s slide down the table and in 1954 they finished bottom of the pile with only 9 victories and just 28 points.
Managers were more likely to survive relegation then and Welsh kept his job but the writing was on the wall when the club could only manage an 11th place finish in 1955 during a season that included a terrible 9-1 humiliation at the hands of eventual champions Birmingham City.
Don spent a lot of money for the time but a lot of it was on players who were either past their best or didn’t show the form they had been deemed capable of.
The directors believed that a change was needed and Welsh was dismissed towards the end of the 1955-56 season and not given another chance to take Liverpool back into the top division.
Liverpool ended the season in 3rd place finish now under the guidance of Phil Taylor.
| Birthdate: 25.02.1911 |
| Birthplace: Manchester, England |
| Other clubs as manager: Brighton, Bournemouth, Wycombe Wanderers |
| Arrived from: Brighton |
| Signed for LFC: 05.03.1951 |
| First game in charge: 23.03.1951 |
| Contract expiry: 04.05.1956 |
| LFC league games as manager: 218 |
| Total LFC games as manager: 232 |
| Honours: |
| Competition | P | W | D | L | F | A |
| All Games | 232 | 81 | 58 | 93 | 387 | 423 |
| League Matches | 218 | 75 | 55 | 88 | 370 | 409 |
| FA Cup | 14 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 17 | 14 |
| Europe | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Other | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
No comments:
Post a Comment