A young Neville Southall proudly wearing his green goalkeeping jersey
IN THE second part of our exclusive serialisation of his new book, Everton legend Neville Southall discusses for the first time how Kenny Dalglish once tried to sign him for Liverpool, and reflects on one of the low points of his Goodison career – the 5-0 derby defeat by the Reds in 1982
KENNY Dalglish was another manager who had a certain aura and commanded my respect.
He was a football man who was massively enthusiastic, who always wanted his players to improve and was clearly very good at his job because he won lots of trophies.
If he had ever managed Wales I would have been very happy, but that was unlikely.
So, too, was his chance of either of us crossing Stanley Park. But that wasn’t through his want of trying.
In the late 1980s Dalglish started to call me at home from time to time. I didn’t know him at all; I never socialised with my own team-mates so I wasn’t likely to go out with those of our biggest rivals.
It was a bit strange, but I didn’t mind. I liked Kenny and still do; he’s a great football man and good fellow. They were just general football conversations really, but the underlying agenda was seemingly to find out if I was interested in joining Liverpool.
Clearly he could see the situation at Everton, that things weren’t going well and the team were going nowhere at the time. I don’t think he was doing anything wrong. But I would never ever have left for Liverpool: Everton was part of me and I knew how it would hurt the fans and the club, which had shown faith in me by giving me such a long contract.
I know footballers today sometimes don’t value the paper their contracts are written on, but I was a man of my word. There was no way, having asked for a long contract, that I could have turned round and said ‘Oh, by the way, I want to go to Liverpool.’
Later someone told me that Liverpool were prepared to pay £4million for me, which would have doubled the British record fee we had paid for Tony Cottee.
It would have been one of the most sensational transfers ever, but I was never going to be interested in defecting to Anfield.
I think that Merseyside football lost something more intangible the day Kenny left Anfield.
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