Jon Otsemobor only ever made six appearances for Liverpool, yet his is a name no Reds fan of that era will ever forget. For just a year after his debut at Anfield, he was shot in the buttocks.
Born and raised in the Speke area of Liverpool, Otsemobor, the son of a Nigerian father and a mother of Irish descent, did not play organised football until he was 13 but was soon spotted by both Everton and Liverpool, opting to join the latter’s academy.
Converted to a right-back, he was a fixture in Liverpool’s reserve side throughout the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 seasons, where he caught the eye of the club’s first-team coaching staff.
And Otsemobor vividly remembers the day in November 2002 when assistant manager Phil Thompson told him he would be starting a Worthington Cup tie at Anfield against Southampton.
“A couple of us young pros were taken over to training with the first team before the Southampton game, but we didn’t do any training specifically about the opposition,” Otsemobor recalls.
“I was told to travel with the first team to the Marriott Hotel, which is where the squad went if they had a night game at Anfield.
“I was rooming with John-Arne Riise and when we came back up to the room from dinner the phone went and John told me that Phil Thompson wanted to speak to me.
“Phil said that I was going to be playing that night, to ‘get my head on it’ and to ring my mum so she could come to the game. Obviously I was buzzing.
“The next thing, I was sitting in the dressing room with people like Steven Gerrard, but I wasn’t nervous as I had played at Anfield for the youth team.
“I was actually sitting in there before the game with my legs crossed, in a world of my own. Phil Thompson came up to me and said, ‘Alright, son? If you want to play, you’d better liven up.’
“Thankfully, I didn’t give the ball away that night, I had a 100 per cent pass completion ratio and we won 3-1.”
An unusual injury
Otsemobor played nine games on loan at Hull City later that season and looked to have a bright future ahead of him at Anfield, but in October 2003, 11 months on from his debut, he made headlines for rather different reasons when he was shot.
“My friend had just had his first son, so we all went out to town to wet the baby’s head,” he said.
“We went to a place where Robbie Fowler had a bit of a trouble a few months earlier, but I wasn’t a high-profile player and I was just out with my mates so I didn’t think anything…
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