Influence
Despite his Leicester side often falling at the final hurdle and thus the relative lack of honours, Gillies was regarded as being ahead of his time in terms of his tactical ability, and was held in high regard by the likes of Sir Matt Busby and particularly Bill Shankly. Shankly, once saying of Gillies' side: "There's only one team to beware of and that's Leicester City." Shankly watched Gillies' Leicester side, while Liverpool were still in the Second Division and was greatly influenced by his tactics.
Gillies and Johnson were one of the first managerial teams in England to experiment with practicing set-pieces in training and his switching of Frank McLintock at right-half and Graham Cross at inside-right mid-game, proved revolutionary. Gillies saying it "confused opposition" as opposition players would often be asked to mark "our number eight, so they thought Cross was their man, when McLintock had replaced him" as "players hadn't got beyond thinking about numbers then." Shankly later copied this trick as his Liverpool side were promoted to the First Division and went on to win First Division titles.
Read more about this topic: Matt Gillies
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfilment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ... and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)