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Even the most adored and appreciated football legends suffer from pressure.

Liverpool's two most eminent icons cited the peculiar stresses that come with running a cherished football club for their premature retirements.

Bill Shankly was 60 years young when he stepped down as Reds boss in 1974.

"After the FA Cup Final I went into the dressing room and I felt tired from all the years," he said. "Nobody made me pack in. It was worked out between myself and Ness."

Kenny Dalglish's reasoning was profoundly different.

But again, the pressures of leading a football club which is central to so many lives took a terrible toll on his health.

By his own admission, Ian Ayre is no legend. Liverpool's chief executive actually cheered those two figures from afar as a lifelong Liverpool fan.





But this year he has discovered he has more in common with both than he might ever have considered.

Ayre has decided he wants to spend more time with his family - and less time fielding critical scrutiny of his work.

It is an understandable reaction.

When Shankly and Dalglish led Liverpool Football Club with such distinction, football was still a sport.

A sport people obsessed about. But still a sport.

Fans debated tactics, players, systems and refereeing decisions - but the only off-field issues which affected them was the price of a pie and a pint under the Main Stand.

Nowadays everything around a football club is scrutinised - commercial deals, transfers, sponsorship revenues and - most recently - future season ticket price hikes.

Ian Ayre's role in that story, which ended in an unseemly 77th-minute walkout by thousands of supporters from a Premier League match, has been debated and dissected.

His decision to stand down had already been taken - but the level of flak he was forced to field must have convinced him his decision was the right one.

Ian Ayre has been at the heart of that unrelenting scrutiny for nine years, a period during which he has devoted 24/7, 365 days-a-year service to his beloved Liverpool.

Only 52 years old, with four children and three grandchildren - and having drawn a recently publicised seven-figure salary - he has decided he has had enough.

During his nine years with the Reds he has increased commercial revenue, and during a time of of-field turbulence, offered a stabilising presence.

And he has given the Reds ample time to source, vet and appoint a successor.

He won't sever his links with Liverpool - "I will continue to be a fan" he said - but he will do so in a pressure-free seat from May 2017.