Eighteen years on Peter Crouch describes it as the darkest moment of his playing career but what stands out now from those brutal, barren opening weeks as the focal point of Liverpool attack is the love he felt on Merseyside when the rest of the world was laughing at him.
The striker became a source of ridicule when he failed to score in his first four months in the red shirt.
But while opposition fans and the media rounded on a £7m signing who arrived hot off the heels of their most dramatic of Champions League wins, when Crouch reflects now he fondly remembers how the club’s fans continued to back him during an 18-match run without a goal.
