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"It was down to the player whether he chose us or City or Chelsea and he chose us," Benitez told the Liverpool website. "It was very clear from talking to him that he wanted to play for Liverpool.

Liverpool should take chance to cash in on Steven Gerrard

It is all very well, in discussing Liverpool’s woes, to invoke the spirit of Shankly. But how do you define it? You can make a start by listening to 73 minutes and 30 seconds of the great man giving his thoughts to John Roberts, the journalist with whom he collaborated on his autobiography two years after retiring as manager in 1974.

Order the CD — The Amazing Bill Shankly — for £9.99 and I doubt that you will find a better distillation of the spirit that was to make Anfield a fortress than this, delivered in Shankly’s machine-gun Ayrshire tones:

“Now I want one thing. I want loyalty. I don’t want anybody to be carrying stories about anybody else. If somebody comes to me with a story — I warn you about this — whoever you’re telling it about won’t be the one who goes. It’ll be you.

“You’ll go — out! I don’t care if you’ve been here 15 year [sic]. I want everybody to be loyal to each other. And to do everything you do for Liverpool Football Club. And we’ll all get together. And that will make strength . . . And maybe one day we’ll get players as well!”

The last bit may or may not have been a joke (as in “people say football’s more important than life and death . . .&#8221 but everything else was as clear and inspiring as on the day he had addressed the staff and players of a run-down Liverpool in 1959.

This was how Shankly persuaded players with big egos such as Emlyn Hughes and Kevin Keegan to muck in with more modest souls such as Ian Callaghan, Ron Yeats and Chris Lawler and produce the institution that his erstwhile assistant and successor, Bob Paisley, developed into the most successful in Europe.

On Saturday morning I listened to Shankly and on Saturday night I heard Rafael Benítez, who has the job Shankly took half a century ago, respond to the 2-0 defeat away to Portsmouth with this gobbet of cheap sarcasm: “The referee was perfect.” Liverpool have become the opposite of Shankly’s raw material. They have got some players all right — some of the world’s best in their positions, in the cases of Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and arguably Javier Mascherano and Pepe Reina — but a fading spirit.

To envisage their qualifying for next season’s Champions League now is difficult and, although the time has come for change, the obvious course of replacing Benítez as manager should be neglected, at least for the time being, in favour of imagining what a successor to him could be offered. The cupboard is bare. There is only what lies on the table. Or lies eighth in the table , a point above Fulham, who have a match in hand.

This is because the strategy of surrounding Gerrard with players he respects is failing and the Benítez regime is going down with it.

Because the American owners’ priority is repaying loans, there is little money for more new players to provide for either Benítez or a new manager. It must be raised through sales and here Liverpool are fortunate, for the unthinkable is becoming the inevitable. Gerrard will turn 30 in May. He is approaching his sell-by date and, if Liverpool are truly to face at least 18 months out of the Champions League with no plausible prospect of a return after that, he will probably be among the first to admit it.

Already Mascherano wants to go; talk of Barcelona has turned his head. No one, surely, would blame Torres for wanting to stay at the top level. And in these circumstances Gerrard, too, could leave with no hard feelings on either side, which would not have been the case when he almost joined José Mourinho’s Chelsea.

These three players might raise more than £100 million if sold at a time of Liverpool’s choosing and even today you can build a competitive squad for that. So long as you have a manager who can build a spirit; Aston Villa and Fulham, among others, have proved it.

The argument for keeping Gerrard is fiercely emotional. He has a great talent and a genuine love of the club and, when you think of deeds on which Roy Of The Rovers might have been modelled — the late goals against Olympiacos and West Ham United in the FA Cup Final, the start of the fightback to win the 2005 Champions League final against Milan (even, if to listen so some accounts of his heroism that night you might think he had also scored the goals ascribed to Xabi Alonso and Vladimir Smicer, made Jamie Carragher’s vital tackle on Andriy Shevchenko and deputised for Jerzy Dudek during the penalty shoot-out) — the notion of his wearing another shirt is hard to countenance.

But Liverpool can no longer afford such a captain. They can no longer afford a prima donna whose unquestioned brilliance increasingly seems to embarrass and constrain some of those around him.

Shankly would remember Johnny Haynes. He was one of the greatest English midfield players and he spent his entire career with Fulham. He was a better passer than Gerrard and, though nowhere near as quick, scored as many goals.

Yet in all the time he was with Fulham they never had a side as good as today’s because at Fulham today there is something — just something — of the spirit of Shankly.

How many times do we say it? The future lies in the past.

Debate: Should Liverpool sell Steven Gerrard?