Former Liverpool goalkeeper Danny Atherton once made an appearance for the Reds as a striker under Jurgen Klopp. Since then, he has had an incredible journey which has seen him travel the world, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the now-FC United of Manchester keeper.

The 26-year-old went through a very difficult period mentally post-Liverpool, due to the big changes in lifestyle from leaving his boyhood club. Now, he is starting up a mental health podcast to share his experiences and have conversations to help others start the conversations that saved his life.

When Atherton was at Liverpool, he spoke about how his routine and environment were intense and “not comfortable”, as the pure focus was on winning and keeping his space in the team.

“It very much was an environment where I wasn’t comfortable, but it was a good environment to be in. You want to win, any small-sided game you want to win, you had to win.

“The Liverpool way. You’re not at a club that accepts mediocrity; you’ve got to have high standards. That’s something I still carry to this day. It’s been brought in by the coach, which is brilliant, but it’s also brought in by the lads. If you go out to train and someone is not giving it 100%, someone has got to give them a kick up the backside. Training with Liam Coyle, he would bark at you, he would go for you, he’d make sure of it [training 100%].”

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The intensity is full-on being at one of the biggest clubs in the world, but the COVID period before leaving the setup is where the problems started.
Atherton has ADHD, and the change of routine from being so full-on and being surrounded by other people was gone when COVID came about.

The sudden switches of schedule meant Atherton struggled in finding ways to occupy himself, and COVID led to the club recommending therapy for him after his loan to Marine still didn’t make him feel fulfilled.

“It was difficult from a personal point of view and as a human being, but it was difficult for everyone. Liverpool are a billion-pound company; they can afford to put people on furlough. I was on loan at Marine at the time, and my goalkeeping coach was pedalling on a bike from his factory job to training. It gave me my first taste of what it was like to be on my own. I’d be doing Zoom calls every day, but I went from being in school to going to a dressing room every day with my mates, and then being taken out of that, it was difficult; I couldn’t take my mind off it.

“That’s when Liverpool first advised me to see a counsellor. I’m not exaggerating; I’ve got my Strava to prove it. I was doing 15/20km runs at 3 in the morning, waking up at 6am, doing a 100km bike ride from mine to the Peak District, because I constantly needed to occupy myself and my mind.”

Atherton would struggle to cope with the big gap of turning up to school and training, which led to him finding other coping mechanisms to support that.

He reached what, on the outside, would seem to be the best he’d have been feeling for a while after reaching the play-offs in his first senior men’s season and getting to play in Baller League.

However, the imposter syndrome made him feel worse, and he knew he needed to get help: “I just got to play in the playoffs in my first season in men’s football, but I still had these weird feelings; in my analogue, I had thought after thought. It was a dark environment to be in, and I just felt sh*t. In 2025, I had these opportunities like the baller league, then I got relegated with Warrington and got signed by FC United, which was a really good thing, but I still feel like sh*t; I feel awful. I don’t want to do this anymore if this is how I’ll feel. I felt like my life was done; I felt like I had done everything. I’d been at Liverpool, travelled round the world, I’ve got a great life, but that’ll do me. The opportunity of Baller League then came about, and I thought I’d see what that’s like.

“At FC United, I’d be on 14 clean sheets by December, then I would be driving down to London every week to play on Sky, spending time with Micah Richards and Sturridge last season and having chats in rooms I never thought I’d be in. I was shadow boxing Idris Elba as a bit of banter and on a pitch with Angry Ginge. I was still feeling like I shouldn’t be there, and guilt would be creeping in. It slowly just ate away at me, and then about October, November, December, I said I’d eventually end it. I had it on my mind for a while; I was ignoring letters, getting into debt loads. I wasn’t opening letters because I thought I was going to be dead anyway, and I came to terms with it because I was fine. I found myself going down to the woods trying to find somewhere to just end it all. I was drinking a lot, reliant on it, to try and quieten the analogue in my head. It just got too much for me.”

It all then got to a point where he couldn’t hide the struggles, and after being in a bad way from a night out, he then opened up to his Mum and sharing that problem started to get him in a better place mentally.

“I had a load to drink one night and just folded in a nightclub, got checked out by an ambulance. I got a taxi home and opened up completely to my Mum. It’s a difficult conversation to have as it’s not a conversation any mother wants to have with her son. If I don’t get help, I’m going to die, and I am okay with that, but I don’t want to do that to you, so please help me. She did; my mum, my dad, all my family. They got me into therapy, which silenced my thoughts and made me feel better. The more conversations I was having were giving me more perspective and helping me understand myself more. There are little elements, as we talked about with the goalkeeping and Alisson’s saving, that I use now, taking a little bit of info from someone else’s story to help me now. The past 3 or 4 months now I’ve never felt better mentally.”

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Since he opened up to his Mum and went to therapy, he is now feeling a lot better and has now got a mental health podcast: Don’t Want to Talk Pod, where he’ll be talking to people in and around football in the UK to help people understand they are not alone. “If one of them [followers of his Instagram page, or the Redmen TV] can hear what I’ve gone through and understand it, there is a way out of it; you aren’t as alone as you think you are, then job done; that would be brilliant. That then made me come up with the idea of a podcast. I decided I wanted to speak to people about it. So now I’m going to speak to anyone and everyone; I’ve got some really good guests lined up, some Liverpool-based. I want it to be UK-based, so it’s open.

“Hopefully, the conversations I am going to have, you can then go and have these conversations with their mates as it saves lives whilst also showing some of the amazing charities and foundations out there that have got the platforms and tools that I didn’t.”

Atherton’s podcast will be released soon on all platforms, and if you are struggling and need support, you can call the charity MIND on 0300 102 1234.