What happened to ‘unrecognisable’ XI Liverpool that narrowly avoided classic FA Cup giant-killing
A look at the 14 players who featured for a very inexperienced Liverpool side in their 2-2 draw at League Two side Exeter City in the FA Cup third round 10 years ago
Ten years ago, supporters could only have guessed at the change in fortunes that awaited Liverpool Football Club around the corner.
January 2016 found Jurgen Klopp newly at the helm after Brendan Rodgers’ dismissal earlier in the season, and although the coup of landing the former Borussia Dortmund manager brought some cause for optimism, the club was going through a difficult time and still reeling from Steven Gerrard calling time on his legendary tenure at the club at the end of the previous season, as well as the acrimonious sale of Raheem Sterling to Manchester City that same summer.
In truth, the Reds had never really recovered from the loss of Luis Suarez, the inspiration behind the 2013-14 title challenge, to Barcelona the summer before, and had lifted just one lone League Cup in 2012 since Gerrard had almost single-handedly led them to an FA Cup triumph against West Ham United at the Millennium Stadium in 2006.
READ MORE: I scouted Darwin Nunez and joined Liverpool after scoring famous FA Cup goal
Klopp’s arrival brought an undoubted positivity to Anfield that had been sorely lacking since the club’s surprise near miss with a first Premier League title in 2014, but still, the task facing the German to restore Liverpool to even the moderate successes of the 2000s, never mind the glory days of the pre-Sky Sports era, would be a monumental one.
In the years since, fans have seen the Reds lift honours at home and abroad, including two league titles and a sixth European Cup. However, the FA Cup is one competition in which Liverpool’s performances have been relatively low-key in the last decade, with their 2022 triumph on penalties against Chelsea at Wembley marking the only time they’ve made it beyond the quarter-finals since 2015.
As a third-round tie against League One Barnsley beckons this evening, at a time when what the immediate future may hold for the Reds after a difficult title defence under Klopp’s successor Arne Slot, it’s an ideal moment to revisit a crossroads period in the club’s history, at the start of another FA Cup campaign a decade ago.
Flash back to January 2016. Though Klopp’s debut season in the dugout at Anfield would ultimately end with the disappointment of failing to qualify for any European competition, signs of progress would be visible: at a time when most of the country was occupied with the fairy tale run from Leicester City to become the most unlikely of Premier League champions, Kopites had their eyes on the League Cup and Europa League, where their team reached the finals of both competitions in dramatic style only to fall painfully short against Manchester City and Sevilla.
By January, however, the fixture congestion caused by going deep into both competitions had left Klopp with a considerable selection headache, at a time when he was slowly beginning to tease out his preferred XI from the squad he had inherited. from Rodgers.
To compound the problem, a major injury crisis had hit Liverpool by the new year, with 10 first-team players unavailable, including four of the Reds’ centre-backs by the end of a 1-0 victory against Stoke in the first leg of their League Cup semi-final. The result was that by the time the third round of the FA Cup rolled round, a trip south to face League Two Exeter City ranked fairly low on the club’s priorities for their remaining fit first-team players.
In a move, then, that prompted backlash from some who felt that it amounted to disrespecting the long-standing competition – Klopp himself would later take responsibility for the side’s performance, but defended his team selection robustly as the best decision under the circumstances – the Liverpool manager opted to field an almost unrecognisable XI for the fixture at St James Park.
With a starting XI with an average age of 22 and a mere combined 34 appearances for the first-team that season – more than half of those coming from big-money summer signing Christian Benteke – the heavily rotated Reds managed to battle to a 2-2 draw with Exeter, setting up a replay at Anfield where they would eventually secure a comfortable 3-0 victory before falling to defeat against West Ham in the following round.
The side that took to the pitch on January 8, 2016 probably ranks only behind the all-academy XI that remarkably defeated Shrewsbury Town in a fourth-round replay in 2020 as the least experienced team Liverpool have ever fielded in the FA Cup.
It’s a side of players whose Reds careers in the main did not live long in the memory, but together are memorable almost for that fact, that there was ever a match in the club’s history where all of them played at the same time.
Who, then, were Liverpool’s lesser-known FA Cup back=up squad that held down the fort for Klopp when he had no-one else to turn to, and whatever became of them? Let’s take a look…
Adam Bogdan
Brought in to replace Brad Jones as back-up to goalkeeper Simon Mignolet on a free transfer the previous summer, Bogdan’s Liverpool career may well have peaked in his very first game, a League Cup tie with Carlisle United, when his penalty shoot-out heroics after a 2-2 draw spared the Reds’ blushes in another scare against League Two opponents. The performance, alongside Mignolet’s poor form, was enough to see him briefly deployed in the Premier League, but an erroneous display in a 3-0 defeat to Watford ensured that the experiment would be short-lived. The Exeter game was also a night to forget for Bogdan, conceding directly from a corner kick by Lee Holmes.
The arrival of Loris Karius the following summer spelled the end of Bogdan’s Liverpool career. An injury-marred spell at Wigan Athletic and two years at Hibernian followed, before the Hungarian stopper returned to his homeland to sign for Ferencvaros in 2020, where he again saw little first-team action but would pick up three successive league titles before eventually calling time on his career in 2023.
Connor Randall
Growing up in Melling and having been with the club since the age of six, Randall had made his senior debut that season for Liverpool in a 1-0 League Cup win over Bournemouth, and had played just once more before his start at right-back at St James Park. Randall would make only five more appearances for the Reds thereafter, departing on the first of two loan deals in 2017 before a surprise venture to Bulgaria in 2019 to sign permanently for Arda Kardzhali.
He remained there for only one season, signing for Ross County in the summer of 2020, and has since gone on to make more than 170 appearances there, remaining with the club after their relegation from the Scottish Premiership last season.
Tiago Ilori
Signed by Rodgers from Sporting CP in the summer of 2013, Portuguese centre-back Ilori had never made a senior appearance for Liverpool prior to the Exeter FA Cup tie, and was on loan at Aston Villa when Klopp first arrived at Anfield. Having likewise not made an appearance for Villa by January, Ilori was recalled by the Reds to help ease the pressure of their ongoing injury crisis at centre-back.
Even in spite of this, Ilori would play just twice more for Liverpool before departing in 2017 to Reading – one of seven clubs he has represented since his departure. He currently plays for Georgian side FC Dila, helping them to a runners-up finish in the top flight in 2025.
Jose Enrique
A one-time first-team regular at left-back (and a one-time stand-in as goalkeeper for the final minutes of a match against his old side Newcastle United in 2011 after a red card for countryman Pepe Reina) before a recurring knee injury heavily curtailed his playing time, Enrique’s appearances at centre-back against Exeter were two of only three he would make under Klopp in his final season on Merseyside.
The Spaniard would retire the following year after a season back in his homeland in the second tier for Real Zaragoza. A year later, Enrique revealed he had had to undergo surgery for a rare brain tumour, for which he was given the all-clear in 2019, sharing the story of his diagnosis and treatment further in a 2022 interview with the Chordoma Foundation.
Brad Smith
Liverpool’s second goalscorer on the night against Exeter, the Australian left-back was also a product of Liverpool’s youth system, moving from New South Wales to Merseyside in his early teens. Making 10 appearances for the Reds that season, as well as being capped for the Australian senior national team after earlier representing England at youth level, Smith was one of the more seasoned youngsters to play in the match. H
He would stay in the Premier League despite departing Liverpool that summer, joining Reds team-mate Jordon Ibe in signing for Bournemouth, but the move to the south coast never really worked for Smith, and from 2020 to 2025 he played in the United States, representing several MLS sides in that time including FC Cincinnati in 2025. Now 31, Smith is without a club as of the start of 2026, and appears unlikely to add to his tally of 23 international caps, having last played for the Socceroos in 2021.
Joao Carlos Teixeira
The Portuguese attacking midfielder – once hailed as ‘the new Deco’ – was another signing for Liverpool from Sporting CP, though his first appearances in senior football came for the Reds in the 2013-14 season. Teixeira played both games against Exeter, netting his only competitive Liverpool goal in the return 3-0 win at Anfield.
Leaving the Reds permanently after making just eight senior appearances, Teixeira has had seven clubs since, with returns to his native Portugal punctuated by stints in the Netherlands, Qatar and, most recently, China, where he has played for Shanghai Shenhua since 2023, lifting the Chinese FA Super Cup with them last year.
Kevin Stewart
Though technically not one of Liverpool’s own, with the former Tottenham Hotspur youngster having made his senior debut in a loan spell at Crewe Alexandra, Stewart was another player with minimal senior experience when he lined out in midfield for the Reds at St James Park, with the bulk of his senior games coming at loan spells for League Two Cheltenham and Burton Albion.
It was the first of twenty senior appearances he would make for the Reds before departing in 2017 to Hull City – a move that notably saw Andy Robertson head in the opposite direction in what would become one of the Premier League’s great bargain signings of the last decade. Spending three years at Hull before another two at Blackpool, the midfielder hasn’t played professionally since 2023, while he won his sole two senior caps for Jamaica in 2022.
Cameron Brannagan
Having been handed a first-team debut by Rodgers in one of the Northern Irishman’s final fixtures against Bordeaux in the Europa League, Brannagan was still in his teens when he lined-up in midfield against Exeter for Liverpool, one of nine appearances he would make for the Reds.
Following a loan that next season to Fleetwood Town, the former England Under-20 international has since become a mainstay at Oxford United, helping the U’s to promotion to the Championship in 2024 and assuming club captaincy at the start of the current season; he’s approaching 350 appearances and has scored more than 60 goals for the club.
Ryan Kent
Perhaps the biggest success of Liverpool’s own academy prospects to turn out at Exeter, winger Kent made his solitary senior appearance for the club in the 2-2 draw, not playing in the replay at Anfield. Loans to Barnsley and Bristol followed, either side of a brief spell in the Bundesliga with SC Freiburg, but it was a move north of the border to Scotland that sparked an uptick in Kent’s fortunes, where he joined Rangers under Gerrard’s management.
In five seasons at Ibrox Kent made more than 200 appearances and scored 33 goals, helping Rangers in style in 2021 to a first Scottish Premier League title since their 2012 relegation, as well as to the Europa League final in 2022, under Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who is now assistant to Slot at Liverpool. The years since departing Rangers in 2023, however, have been less kind, with an ill-fated brief stint in Turkey with Fenerbahce being followed by a spell with Seattle Sounders; as of 2026, the former PFA Scotland Young Player of the Year is without a club.
Jerome Sinclair
Liverpool’s other goalscorer on the night against Exeter, striker Sinclair still holds the record as the club’s youngest-ever player after making his senior debut at the age of just 16 years and six days in a League Cup victory over West Brom, whom he had left less than two years earlier to move to the Reds’ youth academy.
Those were two of his only five senior appearances for Liverpool before departing in 2016 for Watford, where he would make just 14 appearances in five seasons as he departed on five consecutive loan deals, the last of them in 2021 in Bulgaria for CSKA Sofia. It proved to be the final season of Sinclair’s professional career, with his more recent ventures including owning a branch of Morley’s fast food chain in his home city of Birmingham, and representing the team VZN FC in the six-a-side Baller League UK, led by YouTuber of Sidemen fame, Tobit “TBJZL” Brown.
Christian Benteke
As Liverpool’s marquee summer signing of 2015, seeing the big Belgian centre-forward on this list is an indictment of how ill-fated a match he was for Liverpool. In dire need of goals up top, the Reds forked out £32.5 to bring Benteke in from Aston Villa, a fee second only to their £35m move for Andy Carroll in 2011 for the then-biggest in the club’s history. It wasn’t to be the last of the comparisons between the two.
Benteke was a targetman who was simply out of place in both Rodgers and Klopp’s systems, and despite moments of quality including a spectacular overhead kick against Manchester United, even by January 2016 it was increasingly clear that Liverpool’s new would-be star striker wasn’t the fit they’d desired.
Any hopes that a run against lower-league opposition might provide a much-needed boost in confidence were dashed as Benteke, captain for the night, failed to find the net. Returns to fitness for Daniel Sturridge and Divock Origi and the first appearances at ‘false 9’ for Roberto Firmino further harmed his case, and by the summer, it was regarded as a success that Liverpool managed to recoup most of Benteke’s transfer fee in a sale to Crystal Palace. Initially impressing with 15 league goals in his debut season, he would score just 20 more in the following five, finally leaving Selhurst Park in 2022 – also the year of the last of his 45 caps for Belgium. Three years Stateside followed, winning the MLS Golden Boot with DC United in 2023, before signing for UAE outfit Al Wahda at the start of 2026.
Pedro Chirivella
Though he was in the youth ranks at Valencia until his mid-teens, the Spanish midfielder also was one of Liverpool’s first-team debutants when he was sent on in place of Kolo Toure earlier that season against Bordeaux. He also came on against Exeter, replacing Kent in the 57th minute, and he would play just nine more times for the club in between loan spells in the Netherlands and Spain before departing permanently in 2020.
His most notable contributions for Liverpool included captaining the second-string side that lost 5-0 to Aston Villa in the League Cup that season while the senior squad were in action at that year’s Club World Cup, and being errantly sent on in an earlier round tie against MK Dons despite being ineligible to play – a move that sparked brief concern that the club may be expelled from that season’s competition. Five years in France followed representing Nantes, with Chirivella making 173 appearances for the Ligue 1 side and lifting the Coupe de France with them in 2022; he currently plies his trade for Panathinaikos in Greece.
Sheyi Ojo
Another Liverpool academy graduate who joined from MK Dons as a 14-year-old in 2011, winger Ojo was another player to make his debut in the 2-2 draw at St James Park, replacing Sinclair, and would score his only senior goal for Liverpool in the return 3-0 victory at Anfield. A back injury in 2016 presented a significant setback to his career, and he ultimately made 13 senior appearances in total under Klopp, despite officially remaining a Liverpool player until 2022; he departed on no fewer than six consecutive loan deals in that time, also including a stint at Gerrard’s Rangers and a season at future club Cardiff City.
It was to the Welsh capital that Ojo departed when his time at Liverpool finally came to a close, playing a single season there before a loan to Belgian side Kortrijk, also owned by Cardiff owner Vincent Tan. The former under-20 World Cup winner currently plays in Slovenia for Maribor, helping them to a runners-up finish in the PrvaLiga in 2025.
Joe Maguire
Finally, another representative of Liverpool’s academy since childhood, left-back Maguire likewise made his Liverpool debut from the bench in the fixture at St James Park, in the unfamiliar role of centre-back after coming on for Ilori. Spells at Fleetwood, Crawley Town, Accrington Stanley and Tranmere Rovers would follow after departing the Reds in 2017, before Maguire opted to retire from the game in 2023 – a decision he has since reversed, returning to play for Bury, now in the eighth tier of English football since the club’s expulsion from the Football League amidst financial trouble in 2019.
His ventures since football have also included painting, running his own business and taking lessons as a pilot.
—
So what conclusions can we draw from it all? Ultimately, the ramshackle team that Klopp fielded against Exeter a decade earlier might prompt differing reactions from different people. For some, it will be an indictment of issues that are discussed even more in English football today than they were in 2016: the hectic fixture schedule in England, particularly in the winter period, that may be pushing clubs to rotate squads ever more heavily and face ever-mounting injury lists’ the decreasing prestige of the FA Cup and its decline in priority for the top clubs compared to that of the league and European competitions, and the ever-growing gulf between Premier League and lower-leagues clubs to the point that even the sub-reserves of a Premier League team can be a fit match for a lower league club’s best efforts.
Publicar comentário