Standing alone and visibly dejected in the torrential Merseyside rain, spectators seated in Anfield's famous Kop grandstand trudged towards the exits as Nathan Eccleston's fourteen years' worth of dedication began to unravel.
"I thought my world was over because no matter your age, you have to take accountability as a professional footballer," he tells the ECHO in an exclusive interview.
The then 19-year-old forward had been assigned the simple task of converting a penalty from 12 yards. For Eccleston, this had been his livelihood for three-quarters of his life, in a journey that had taken him from a council estate in north Manchester to rubbing shoulders with legendary figures Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres.
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It was September 2010 and Roy Hodgson had not long been in the managerial hot-seat at Liverpool, yet unrest was starting to build among supporters. Just weeks into the new season fans were already longing for the campaign to end, as a trophy-starved Liverpool side played host to Northampton Town in the League Cup third round. It's a fixture now used as a precursor as to just how low the standards of the club would sink during Hodgson's dismal six-month stint.
For the Cobblers, it was arguably the greatest night in their history, with the League Two side knocking out a club that had defied the odds to conquer European football some five years earlier. David N'Gog's late header had temporarily saved the Reds' blushes as he pushed the game into extra time, with two goals apiece the by-product of the 120-minute affair.
Possessed by his determination to impress, Eccleston seized an opportunity plenty of senior players had clearly shirked the responsibility of. On his first significant Anfield appearance, he walked towards the Kop End knowing how lofty the stakes of the penalty shootout were. Miss and Northampton would be one successful spot-kick away from one of English football's great shocks. Score and he would secure an everlasting memory no one could ever deprive him of.
"I did my usual stutter and, yeah, it hit the crossbar at the Kop," he recalls. "There was a picture, I remember at the time, the rain was lashing down and I put my hands over my face.
"I just remember the Kop singing my name as encouragement. I’ve always said, I said it as a 15-year-old going to my very first Liverpool game as a Manchester-born lad, Liverpool have the best fans in the world."
A product of Bury's youth academy, Eccleston made the move to Kirkby as a promising 15-year-old after his prolific scoring record at youth level had attracted interest from teams in the north-west. Raised in Newton Heaton, it was his Manchester United-supporting father who told him the news of interest from those on the other side of the M62. Eccleston was astonished.
"As you can imagine, being a 15-year-old lad from Manchester, when Liverpool are the ones that are calling you it comes as a bit of a surprise initially," he says. "Then the overwhelming feeling of Liverpool being interested in me and wanting me to come down and trial hit - I literally just started crying. I knew what a great opportunity it could be for a lad like myself to go and present my skills to a club like Liverpool.
"That summer Liverpool had just won the Champions League, and whether you were a die-hard Liverpool fan or not, everyone in the world of football was a Liverpool fan that night because of how historic Istanbul was."
After a meteoric rise through the ranks of Kirkby over a four-year period, complemented with international recognition by England's U17s along the way, Eccleston was surprisingly handed a way into the first team in 2009 during Rafa Benitez's final season at Anfield.
At just 18 years old, he was also included in the Reds' Champions League squad for the 2009/10 campaign. It was a blissful transition into life as a professional football for the striker who had been made to wash his own kit and put up the goal nets during his days as a youth scholar at Bury.
That trajectory continued to rise when in September 2009, after his fine early-season form continued with the then Liverpool reserves, Sammy Lee, Benitez's assistant manager, told Eccleston he would be included in the first-team squad travelling down to the Emirates for the League Cup tie with Gunners in two days' time.
Despite Arsene Wenger's men defeating a mismatched Liverpool side, who had slipped at the first hurdle in their quest to add to the Anfield trophy cabinet, for Eccleston, it was a moment he will never forget as he featured for the final two minutes after replacing Philipp Degen.
"There were a couple of younger players that I knew like Martin [Kelly] and Jay [Spearing] so I just stuck with them," he says.
"The senior players like [Jamie] Carragher, Stevie [Gerrard] and [Javier] Mascherano I was just in awe of them. I would say hello to them quietly and keep it moving. It wasn’t until the following summer when Roy Hodgson took charge and I did pre-season with the seniors and fully integrated I guess, but as you can imagine as a 17/18-year-old it was pretty daunting walking into a room full of superstars."
There would be another brief Premier League cameo in October away at Fulham but that was as good as it got during a breakout season for the youngster as shortcomings in the league for Benitez and his side, who plunged to seventh, would be the final chapter of the Spaniard's illustrious Anfield reign as off-field issues regarding the club's ownership contributed to his departure after six years.
Eyebrows were raised when stand-in chairman Martin Broughton replaced Benitez by appointing Hodgson, even if he had guided Fulham to the 2010 Europa League final and defeated Italian giants Juventus on the way. Though despite the underwhelming nature of the appointment quickly spreading through the fanbase, for Eccleston, it handed him his first opportunity as an Anfield first-teamer.
Additionally, the club's ever-increasing £350m debt, largely owed to the Royal Bank of Scotland, meant the futures of Gerrard, Torres and Mascherano were in considerable doubt as the club desperately explored ways to balance the books. But for the recent graduates of the club's Kirkby academy, it meant those coming through the door at Anfield would be minimal and there would be a full pre-season to impress Hodgson.
"I think something, that all players, not even just youngsters, imagine when they're coming under new management is whatever happened in the past is gone and you’ve got a new opportunity. For me, I always looked at it as like, 'Ok, any bias towards any players had gone'.
"For me, it was, 'Okay if you remove the star name and just base us all on our work ethic and how we apply ourselves,' it’s a great opportunity. Roy Hodgson certainly did that for me.
"I remember coming back from my loan, he brought a couple of youngsters up for pre-season, and I just grafted really hard. I think we were in Switzerland [pre-season] and I did really well and he just said, ‘You’ll be staying with us for the remainder of this season' and I'd be training full-time at Melwood with the actual first-team. So for me, it was amazing.
"I remember specifically, that I played seven times under Roy and he was that type of manager if you were working hard in training and you applying yourself he would give you the opportunity," the 31-year-old recalls. "On a couple of occasions, he played me ahead of some senior players and some international players, and I was really grateful for that because he gave you a really fair crack at the whip. I was really grateful that he didn’t have a bias. That’s why I think, obviously, his time at Liverpool is probably viewed up and down but for me, as a player, I appreciated that he picked players on their attitude."
As an inexperienced striker eager to learn his craft at one of the game's greatest institutions, Eccleston's promotion to Melwood on a full-time basis in the summer of 2010 handed him the opportunity to craft his style under the watchful eye of Torres.
Firing 17 goals in his second season on English shores and managing an impressive 24-goal return during his final full season on Merseyside before prevailing in the World Cup with his Spain, Liverpool's No.9 was naturally being touted for a big cross-country move to Chelsea as his reputation on the continent continued to rise at an alarming rate. The Spaniard's decision to stay put at Anfield until January 2011 handed Eccleston a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to soak in Torres' supreme craft of finishing.
"It was the pinball effect! One-touch, two-touch, I used to always remember the players like Gerrard, as a striker, as soon as you would move they would see it and the ball would already be there. The pace of the pace was unbelievable, too!" he says.
"Fernando came to Liverpool and lit the club alight. He was amazing. His change of pace was out of this world, he only needed a yard to get past somebody and as everybody saw his finishing at Liverpool was so clinical. I had never seen anything like it! He kind of taught me about movement and that you only needed half a yard, because his movement was phenomenal.
"He [Torres] was very encouraging and he assessed that I was a young player and I was trying. So there were mistakes you could potentially get away with."
Following a handful of strengthening cameos in the Europa League, it would be on that night against Northampton, as an innocent 19-year-old, where Eccleston would learn about the harsh truths of the professional game: the soaring heights followed by the gut-wrenching lows.
"As my hands were on my face, at that moment, the reality kicked in that I had just missed a penalty and we were out of the cup," he recalls with a downbeat tone some ten years later. "After I was heartbroken in the tunnel and I just remember Sammy Lee saying, ‘Get your f****ing head up!’ Stevie [Gerrard] came into the dressing room and said the same thing: ‘We’ve all been there and even the best players miss penalties, you'll bounce back.'
"As you can imagine, that’s a distinctive memory of my life and I remember that game. Roy [Hodgson] picked the starting eleven and it had some really senior players and, no offence to Northampton, it was a team we should have been beating quite easily.
"I was hoping as a youngster I would come on and we’d be a couple of goals up and I could go on and have fun, but that wasn’t the case. I remember me and Jonjo [Shelvey] came on and we did really well. We went into extra time and as a youngster, I was playing really well, I was attacking, confident and I felt great.
"When it went to penalties I was one of the players to step up, there were far more senior players but I was the penalty taker for the reserves at the time and I was confident taking penalties.
"I went into training the next day, and for me, the senior players and staff made me feel so assured that I didn’t do anything wrong. I was told that it shouldn’t have been left in my hands anyway, it showed what kind of character I was to step up in the first place. So, I kind of got confidence from that, but I think games after that I was confident the guys were like listen ‘ it happens to everyone.' It was a learning curve."
For those inside Anfield on that wretched autumn evening back in September 2010, it's a night frequently recognised as the trigger for one of the worst spells in Liverpool's modern history. However, for Eccleston, it's the night when he defied the odds to fulfil a childhood dream as he featured at Anfield as a fully-fledged member of the Reds' first-team. He has no regrets.
"As a football club, it was horrific to be knocked out of a cup by Northampton. A club, of the stature of Liverpool, should not be getting beat by Northampton at home.
"The whole experience of playing at Anfield in front of the Kop, I’m 31 years old now, it’s an experience I’ll never forget.
"I’ve always been the type of person to take things in my stride, but I guess I’ve always been the kid from the council estate. I always gave my best, is there much more I could have done? Probably not.
“I look back at those memories at Liverpool and they are the best years of my life, they shaped the man who I am today.
“For me, I beat the odds.”
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