Profile

Playmaker Jimmy Melia started as a 15-year-old at Liverpool, featuring in the side at 19, and becoming a regular for the next five years.

He was Liverpool's top scorer in the 1958/59 season, scoring 21 goals in 40 games. Melia worked hard for the team and possessed a good football brain. Melia lost his place in the Liverpool team after a reshuffle in the Championship 1963-64 season when Shanks brought back Ian St John into midfield, taking Melia's place, putting Alf Arrowsmith up front instead of St John.

Born in Liverpool, Jimmy was a Schoolboy international of exceptional promise and clearly destined from an early age to have a long and distinguished soccer career, which he certainly did by playing in over 500 Football League games for five different clubs. But it was with his home-town club that he made his name as an inside-forward after coming through the junior ranks and signing professional forms on his 17th birthday in November 1954. Liverpool has just been relegated to the Second Division after a long spell and were desperate to return to the First, especially as city rivals Everton had passed them on the way down as they returned to the top League as runners-up to Leicester City.

Jimmy had to wait until shortly before Christmas 1955 to make his debut and he played in four games out of five before returning to the reserves. But the following season, when still a teenager, he broke into the first-team in the autumn and would be a regular in the side for the next seven years. The strain of just missing out on promotion three seasons running finally took its toll on manager and ex-player Phil Taylor and it quickly became apparent that Bill Shankly saw in Melia all the qualities that were needed to help the club back to its position amongst the country's elite. Jimmy revelled in the challenge and when the breakthrough finally came in 1961-62 he played in all 42 league games and was a key member of the team which took the Second Division title by eight points from Leyton Orient.

He had a good debut season in Division One, missing only three games, but two-thirds of the way through the following season, in one of the most settled sides the club has ever had, he lost his place to Alf Arrowsmith and was almost immediately transferred to Wolverhampton Wanderers, although he had played in enough league matches before the transfer to qualify for a League championship medal. Before the end of the year though, he had moved further south to join Southampton on the South coast and he enjoyed four good years there (including helping them into the First Division in 1966) before he moved on to Aldershot as first player-coach and then player-manager. In January 1971 he had the enormous thrill of leading his club out for an FA cup third round tie at Anfield and he received a wonderful reception from the Liverpool crowd who remembered how tirelessly he had worked when he was one of their own.

After his playing days were finally over, Jimmy held numerous coaching and managerial posts in several countries but is probably most remembered for being behind Brighton and Hove Albion's heroic run to the FA Cup final in 1983, which included a shock fifth round victory over Liverpool at Anfield when they were bottom of the First Division at the time and their hosts were top. To make matters worse, the winning goal was scored by a Liverpool old-boy, Jimmy Case!

Previous Clubs:
Wolves, Southampton, Aldershot, Crewe