As you may be aware the HJC is dedicating the Blackburn home game on 14th October to raising money to help towards the release of Michael from Bulgaria. All monies paid on any items purchased that day in the shop will be donated to the Bring Michael Home Fund.

To this end the HJC is looking for volunteers to help with the raising of funds. If you feel that you want to, can help with this cause and can be available at the shop from about 11am on the day please contact john_mac on RAWK for further details.

Thanks.

1) In 1996-97 which manager changed his team for every single league game, winning the league by 7 points?

2) In which year did the same manager keep the same XI for consecutive games just once, winning the league by 10 points?

3) The following year which rival manager kept the same XI for consecutive games just twice, but also won the league despite this rotational tinkering?

4) In 2005-06 which club won 12 consecutive games making 49 changes to the starting line-up, an average of over 4 per match?

5) Which brusque, fat-headed British manager, beloved by the tabloids, revealed this week that last season he kept the same side just twice in 53 matches?

6) Name teams X and Y and their points totals so far this season:

Team X: Players used 20
(two starting 7, one 6, five 5, four 4, two 3, four 2, two 1)

Team Y: Players used 20
(two starting 7, four 6, two 5, three 4, three 3, two 2, four 1)

Answers on a postcard to the next journalist to pass on the latest bandwagon.

Reading the tributes to Shanks over the last couple of days, it’s been heartening that so many fans seem to have gleaned a little of how we on the Kop all felt for Bill Shankly back in those heady days of the great man’s reign. So many of those writing never witnessed the man nor followed the club under his leadership. In many cases, had not even begun to generate a glint in their father’s eye. So how can mere words ever convey how we did all feel back then?

The devotion I - and I’m sure many thousands like myself - felt for Bill Shankly was unlike anything I certainly have ever felt before or since. Looking back now – and even after so many decades of marriage, parenthood and more recently grandparenthood not to mention the superlative trappings that accompany a Liverpudlian fandom – the intensity of how we all felt for Shanks still resonates as powerfully as ever in this particular heart. This was a man who literally was a messiah to the multitudes of Reds.

As I pore over the epitaphs, the archive photographs and video footage the immense fondness I felt for the man becomes overwhelming.

To say ours became a devotion indivisible from that we all felt for the club is probably gravely understating the strength of the bond Shanks had forged with us. And we with him. So much so that when Shanks retired it actually felt like the club had folded up and died. As if we’d all been abandoned by our father and guardian.

But life goes on, of course. And that sense of loss probably lasted only until the first highspot of the ensuing season; the first surging move; the opening Keegan goal. We were flesh and blood football fans after all. The game and its primeval urges were bound to prevail.

And yet 32 years on from his retirement and now 25 years since he finally left us for good, the feelings for the man remain as strong as ever. At 56 I love the man as dearly today as I ever did back then.

There was - and only ever could be - one Bill Shankly. He was touted universally as a unique specimen. Yet only we at Anfield knew just how truly unique he really was. Others may have experienced him vicariously. They may have celebrated his shafts of wit and his vibrancy. He did when all’s said and done also belong to the game he championed so stoutly. But in the end it was his flock on Merseyside who were chosen by him to be as one with him. We were the ones who shared his consummation with our club and our lives. Together as one incredible, indefatigable entity transcending anything else football has ever spawned.

No fans were ever granted anything to surpass such an honour and privilege as that. And no fans ever will be again.

Shanks may well have passed away that September day twenty five years ago but the power of his spirit can never really leave us. While it is embedded so deep within the hearts and psyche of every Liverpudlian and within every fabric of the bastion he forged, Shanks will forever be amongst us.