Peter Crouch has admitted that he "just wanted to hide" during his first few months at Liverpool, after failing to find the net in 18 successive appearances.
Liverpool snapped Crouch up for £7 million from Southampton in July 2005, tying the forward down to a four-year contract at Anfield.
He went on to feature in 134 matches for the club, scoring 42 goals in total, while getting his hands on the FA Cup and Community Shield.
However, Crouch wasn't able to make an immediate impact on Merseyside, as he became the butt of jokes among supporters for going four months without scoring.
The drought finally ended when the former England frontman scored a brace against Wigan, but he describes the period beforehand as the lowest point of his entire career.
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Crouch has revealed that he didn't "even want to leave the house" amid the public scrutiny he found himself under, but says Liverpool supporters stuck by him and helped him bounce back.
He told Paddy Power: "I went 18 games before scoring for Liverpool back in 2005 and I’ve been asked if I ever worried I’d never get a goal and if my team-mates were giving me stick. Frankly, it was the worst time in my football career.
"I remember my dad saying ‘you’re going to a massive club, European champions at the time, just get your first goal and your confidence and you’ll be fine’.
"I thought ‘yeah I’ll get in there, get one early, get the monkey off my back and then bang’. But it just wasn’t happening.
"In my defence, I felt like I was trying to do too much. But not too many clubs would have stuck by me. I went 18 games without scoring. Everywhere I went people knew, it was on the back of the papers.
"I think the total time without a goal had clocked up to 24 hours, and on the front page one of them had Jack Bauer from 24 mocked up with different pictures of my face looking in anguish, and I thought it just couldn’t get any worse.
"I stopped watching TV and just wanted to hide in my house. It was horrible. My dad had to keep dragging me out after games and have a few beers with me because I just didn’t want to leave the house.
"Then thankfully the first goal went in – which in truth probably wasn’t even my goal – against Wigan. It went about 40 yards in the air and the keeper Mike Pollitt inadvertently helped me out by trying to tip it over the bar but instead it went in. At that moment, the whole ground was shaking. It was an electric atmosphere at Anfield for that first goal.
"I got a load of stick. Loads and loads. But you know what, the Liverpool fans stuck with me and I’ll always remember that to this day."
Crouch was eventually sold to Portsmouth in 2008, and went onto play for Tottenham, Stoke and Burnley before hanging up his boots in the summer of 2019.
