The ex-Liverpool defender remembers the night he was shot in the back – and how Rafa Benitez made him cry

Former Liverpool defenseman Jon Otsemobor opened the night he was shot in a Merseyside bar, and how he begged Rafael Benitez to stay at the club.

The right-back of the former Reds has played six games for the Anfield club, but we remember mostly an incident that occurred in October 2003 while he was celebrating the baby's birth. A friend.

"We went to a place where Robbie Fowler had had some trouble a few months earlier," said the Reds Academy's product at Planet Football.

"But I was not a top player and I just went out with my friends so I did not think about it anymore."

"My friend had problems with a boy in the club, so he took a revolver against another boy, even though we banned him.

"That other guy pulled a gun in my direction, probably to scare me, but he took off another boy's hand and then touched me.

"I felt a little weird and when I pulled my hand from the back of my pants, it was as if I had soaked it in red paint, there was so much blood. "

Otsemobor said that the incident had presented him in a bad light and that after being transferred to Bolton and Crewe, he had been released following Benitez's arrival at the place of Gérard Houllier in 2004.

"People started saying that I was in gangs – you know, a black Scouse boy, so anyone who did not know me would automatically believe what was being said," he said.

"I had one more year left on my contract, so I went on loan to Crewe.

"Upon my return, I met Benitez in his office and he told me that he was not going to give me another contract.

"I did not want to leave Liverpool and I was crying in the hall, asking Benitez to give me just another year, but he said that he had made his decision."

Otsemobor – who also played for Rotherham, Norwich, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday, Milton Keynes Donations and Tranmere – said that he did not think that Trent Alexander-Arnold, another right-back local, would see his career unfolds in the same way.

"I have watched him a few times and he has been exceptional," he continued.

"I do not know Trent, but I heard that he was a nice, well-trained boy and did not mix with bad circles like I did when I was his age.

"I have regrets, I would not have gone to the places I went when I went out because it gave me a bad image.

"People know me for the wrong reasons."