\n<\/p>\n
Long-serving player, captain, league winner and manager \u2013 Phil Taylor is ingrained in the Liverpool history books.<\/p>\n
A forward-turned-defender for whom the club stumped up \u00a35,000 to purchase from Bristol Rovers in March 1936, his on-pitch career at Anfield spanned almost 18 years but was interrupted by the Second World War.<\/p>\n
Taylor scored a last-minute equaliser on his debut but the Reds were struggling in the lower reaches of the top flight during the seasons immediately prior to hostilities pausing professional football.<\/p>\n
It was a much different story when war stopped and the game resumed, with Taylor featuring in 35 out of 42 matches as Liverpool won the 1946-47 championship \u2013 their first for 24 years.<\/p>\n
He clocked up at least 30 league appearances in each of the next four seasons and was appointed skipper at the turn of the decade.<\/p>\n
That included leading the Reds out for their first FA Cup final at Wembley. However, they were beaten 2-0 by Arsenal in the 1950 showpiece.<\/p>\n
Taylor\u2019s playing time diminished as he then passed his mid-30s and the Englishman pulled on the Liverpool jersey for the last time in January 1954.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe possibility of one day playing for such a club as Liverpool and getting a First Division championship medal never entered my head,\u201d he said. \u201cCertainly a possible Wembley appearance was beyond my wildest dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n
His Anfield association continued beyond retirement as he served as a coach and then had a three-and-a-half-year spell as manager before being replaced by Bill Shankly<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long-serving player, captain, league winner and manager \u2013 Phil Taylor is ingrained in the Liverpool<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}