Liverpool still labour in the shadow of Bill Shankly

In the tapes he made with John Roberts for his autobiography, Bill Shankly's voice suddenly leaps to great oratorical heights when the talk moves round to the abject state Liverpool were in when he joined in 1959. The exchange would haunt the Kop as they gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Shankly's arrival during tonight's home game against Wigan.

"The facilities weren't good enough for the public of Liverpool," Shankly starts. "The ground wasn't good enough for the public of Liverpool. The team wasn't good enough for the public of Liverpool. And there was nothing good enough for the public of Liverpool. Nothing at all. There was only potential. But I knew the people of Liverpool were like the people where I come from. They've got fervour in them – and they've got pride."

Skin-tingling rhetoric has not been a feature of the Rafael Benítez era. Nor could a Spaniard working in England in the mass-media age hope to match Shankly's mastery of comedy. But there is plenty in the diagnosis from 1959 to stir uncomfortable thoughts in the Anfield crowd after a run of three wins in 15 games. No new stadium in sight; a team not good enough to survive the Champions League group stage or penetrate the Premier League's top six; no obvious "potential" if corporate debt keeps bearing down and the summer brings an exodus of stars.

At least boardroom conflict spans all five decades. In his recently republished memoirs Liverpool's spiritual father remarks that the directors' room where he had to fight for funds was so dark and gloomy that he called it "the morgue". He told Jimmy Melia in there: "Watch you don't trip over the coffins."

Benítez, who adopts the posture in press conferences of a captured airman being interrogated by the enemy, is not devoid of wit. When the Guardian was interviewing Jamie Carragher at the club's Melwood training ground, Benítez breezed past and called to his defender, "English lessons?" ‑ a joke aimed at the defender's deep Scouse accent.

Levity, though, is in shorter supply on Merseyside this week than Manchester United bedspreads. Liverpool have lost as many games this season (10) as they have won and tonight's Shankly retrospective will intensify the spotlight on Benítez, especially as Ian St John, an idol of the 60s, said after Sunday's home defeat to Arsenal: "Don't ask what Shanks would have made of it. I dread to think, and the timing of it makes me feel even more sad." Graeme Souness, another Anfield aristocrat, had claimed his alma mater were heading for "meltdown".

Nostalgia's balm will doubtless soothe the congregation when nine Shankly family members and 15 players from his pomp (1959-1974) parade on the pitch at half-time and a mosaic evokes a time when the man from the mines of Glenbuck spotted special virtues in the Liverpudlian identity. Socialism, loyalty, unity and sober endeavour were the principles Shankly harnessed when he arrived to find Melwood "a wilderness" where "there were hills, there were hollows, there were trees, there was long grass", and where a passive acceptance of mediocrity was the norm until a change in culture provided the money to buy Ron Yeats and St John.

Older Kopites will recall a day mentioned by Kevin Keegan in his autobiography: "I'll never forget the game soon after he [Shankly] had retired when he turned up at Anfield and stood with his beloved fans in the Kop. The first we players knew about it was when we heard the swelling chant from the supporters, 'Shankly, Shankly, here he is, here he is'."

Keegan's hero broke through with the league winning sides of 1964 and 1966. The next wave won the 1973 title and the FA Cup in his final year, with Tommy Smith, Emlyn Hughes, Keegan and Steve Heighway. Since he walked into his own wilderness of aimlessness and regret 35 years ago, when pathos splashed the script, Liverpool have been led by three Boot Room graduates (Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Roy Evans), two Anfield superstars (Kenny Dalglish and Souness) and two A-list European coaches who imported French (Gérard Houllier) and then Spanish cultures.

Each has been viewed inevitably as an inheritor of the Shankly tradition. The name is kept alive, too, by political resistance. The movement against the US owner-speculators, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, marches under the "Spirit of Shankly" banner, and the most emotive landmarks at the stadium, after the Hillsborough memorial, are the Shankly Gates and statue, which bears the epitaph: "He made the people happy."

This is the challenge all Liverpool managers are landed with: to be a brilliant comedian, statesman, team-builder and moral patriarch. Tommy Smith remembers Shankly rejecting a player after he had tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease during his medical. "I'm not having a philanderer here," he erupted. "This is a family club. Send him back."

The ultimate accolade is to be compared favourably to Shankly. The stamp of doom is to be dismissed as a vandal to his legacy. The cult is explained by Brian Reade in 43 Years With the Same Bird – A Liverpudlian Love Affair. Reade writes of Shankly: "In the lean years we stood by him, refusing to doubt that he would turn things around. In the early Seventies, when the trophies came flooding back, we ditched mere adoration and worshipped him like a pagan god. He started something unique in football: the manager as idol. A tradition Liverpool fans respect to this day under Benítez [the book was published in 2008].

"Look at the huge liver bird flag that spreads across the Kop shortly before every kick-off and you'll see, down either side of it, not drawings of the greatest strikers over the years, but the managers. Listen to the songs sung about Benítez, as they were about Houllier, and you will hear a crowd reaching out to its leader, demanding a communion between the dug-out and the stands. It's a cry to be loved, a request for the man who holds the club's destiny in his hands to recognise his flock. And it dates directly back to Shankly. Imagine how that must have felt for Houllier and Benítez." St John wrote: "Shankly once said that his power over the fans made him feel like Chairman Mao."

Loyalty ingrained 50 years ago has bought Benítez and Houllier precious time, but today's Liverpool side have already endured as many Premier League defeats (six in 16 outings) as they did in the previous two campaigns combined. Shankly built the club from the bottom up. Under Benítez, Liverpool are cracking from the top down. Shankly's shadow falls across him, as it will the next man in.