With 33 minutes gone, the debutant collected the ball just inside his own half and near the touchline. He powered forward, moved inside and left three opposition players in his dust.
Twenty yards from goal he unleashed a powerful shot which gave the goalkeeper no chance but rattled off the Anfield Road crossbar.
The list of Liverpool players who’ve scored on their debut for the club contains some illustrious names, not least Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk.
But thanks to his shot against Sunderland in 2011 being an inch or two too high, Stewart Downing was destined not to join them. It proved to be a portent for the whole campaign.
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The reason we’re taking a look back at Downing’s Liverpool career is because it’s the anniversary of his first league goal for the club. The problem was that he scored it in 2012, 16 months after his debut.
The former Aston Villa winger had scored twice in both the FA Cup and Europa League at that point, but his goal in a 4-0 win over Fulham nine years ago was his first in the most important competition.
Downing was signed for £19m in the first summer of the FSG era, with the transfer instigated by their director of football strategy, Damien Comolli.
He used analytics to identify targets, with the chance creation skills of Downing, Charlie Adam and Jordan Henderson brought in to set up opportunities for Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez, who had joined at the start of the year.
And in this sense, Downing didn’t disappoint. While Suarez created the most chances in total, in quality terms the former had the edge.
Downing created 11 clear-cut chances, the most of any Liverpool player that season and joint-tenth most in the Premier League.
To put his efforts into context of the modern day, Roberto Firmino, Mane and Andy Robertson each provided 11 clear-cut chances last season, while Salah set up 12.
But where that quartet of present-day Reds each got somewhere between five and seven assists, Downing didn’t get one.
Liverpool’s finishing woes in 2011/12 have become the stuff of statistical legend. Kenny Dalglish’s side hit the woodwork 24 times in that campaign and missed a total of 66 clear-cut chances.
That was only one more than champions Manchester City, but they converted 50 of their golden opportunities while the Reds only put 27 of theirs away.
In that sense it was not Downing’s fault that he didn’t register an assist as he did the job that he had been brought in to do.
But Comolli should have been all too aware that the England international had already had issues with turning shots of his own into goals.
Since 2003/04, when Opta’s detailed records began, the record for most shots in a Premier League season without scoring is held by Jay-Jay Okocha, who took 137 for Bolton in that first season of available data.
Second in the standings though is Downing, who fired off 82 fruitless shots for Middlesbrough in 2008/09.
His total of 72 in his first campaign for Liverpool is third in the list, meaning it has not been topped by any Premier League player in the last nine seasons.
As no goal-less player has had more than 21 efforts as we approach the half way point of 2021/22, Downing’s woes are not likely to be topped this season either.
And so to the game with Fulham in December 2012. To make the match even more remarkable, Downing also collected his first league assist for the club, setting up a goal for Steven Gerrard in the first half.
The skipper returned the favour after the break, enabling Downing to score in front of the Kop.
However, he didn’t endear himself to the Liverpool fanbase by putting his fingers to his lips as he ran away to celebrate. Any grumbles about his lack of output were largely justified.
Further league goals followed against Wigan and Tottenham, and there were four more assists before the 2012/13 season drew to a close too.
But that was as good as it got for Downing at Liverpool, and he was sold to West Ham in the summer of 2013.
He didn’t perform as badly for the club as many people thought, but neither did he hit any heights, and perhaps that sentiment defines his whole career pretty neatly too.
It’s hard not to wonder how things might have worked out had that rasping shot against Sunderland gone in though.
