It says everything about Ray Kennedy’s capacity to cope with the challenges of life that his extraordinary achievements with Liverpool and Arsenal came in the face of acute self-doubt.
In the early years at Arsenal, where he was a legend of the 1971 Double team and scored the title-winning goal at White Hart Lane, he often joked of going back to the job he had left as a trainee sugar boiler in a sweet factory at Whitley Bay in his native North East.
At Liverpool, where he arrived in 1974, he became convinced Bill Shankly, who resigned on the very day he signed, was privately expressing doubts about the wisdom of a £200,000 deal.