shambles". The Liverpool squad he inherited consisted largely of average players and some promising reserves. In spite of the difficulties, Shankly quickly felt at home in his new club and believed he shared an immediate bond with the supporters, whom he saw as his kind of people. He quickly established working relationships with the coaching staff of Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Reuben Bennett who shared his views about loyalty to each other and to the club. Paisley's influence at Liverpool was crucial for, as Kelly puts it, Shankly was "the great motivating force behind Liverpool, but it was Paisley who was the tactician". One aspect of the quartet's legacy to football was the conversion of an old storage room into what became known as the "Boot Room", which was used for tactical discussion while cleaning and repairing boots. Although Shankly believed he had an excellent coaching staff, the playing staff were not so impressive – indeed, Shankly said of the latter: After only one match I knew that the team as a whole was not good enough. I made up my mind that we needed strengthening through the middle, a goalkeeper and a centre half who between them could stop goals, and somebody up front to create goals and score them. To deal with what he saw as a below average playing squad, he placed 24 players on the transfer list. All of them had left the club within one year. Shankly resolutely pursued his strength through the middle goal and always knew which three players he needed to achieve it. Melwood was overgrown and had only an old wooden cricket pavilion. Shankly commented that one of the pitches looked as if bombs had been dropped on it and he asked if the Germans had been over in the war. He instituted a development programme to cultivate the site and modernise the facilities. In the meantime, he arranged for the players to meet and change at Anfield before going to and from Melwood by bus. According to Kelly, Liverpool's eventual success was based on hard work done in the training system that Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Bennett introduced at Melwood. Shankly deplored long-distance running on roads and insisted that, apart from warm-up exercises or any special exercises needed to overcome injuries, the players trained on grass using a ball. Everything was done systematically with players rotating through exercise routines