There is something almost cinematic about a footballer who once lined up in Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool now hunting for a contract the way an out-of-work marketing executive might, scrolling LinkedIn, drafting a post, hoping the algorithm does what his agent apparently could not.
Ovie Ejaria’s story has taken exactly that turn, and it says as much about the brutal middle tier of modern football as it does about the player himself, a midfielder who once looked destined for something far grander than posting his CV on a professional networking site in the hope that a scout, an agent, or a sympathetic sporting director happens to scroll past.
Ten years ago this felt unthinkable.
Ejaria was one of the brightest products to come through Liverpool’s academy in the Klopp era, a technically gifted midfielder who had already switched allegiance from Arsenal to Liverpool as a teenager and looked like he had the tools to make it at the very top.
He made his senior debut for the Reds in September 2016, coming off the bench in a 3-0 League Cup win away at Derby County, replacing Roberto Firmino weeks before his nineteenth birthday and giving Anfield a glimpse of the composure that had made him such a coveted prospect.
Two further substitute appearances in the Premier League followed that season, and for a brief stretch it genuinely looked like Ejaria might carve out a role in one of the most exciting squads English football had produced in years.
That did not happen, and the story of what came next is a long, winding tour through the loan system that so many talented young English players get swallowed by, followed by a career that never recovered its early momentum.
As of September 8, 2026, Ejaria finds himself a free agent at 28 years old, without a club, and taking the unusual step of advertising his availability on LinkedIn rather than relying solely on the traditional channels of agents and scouting networks that so often fail players once they slip outside the game’s upper tiers.
How Did Ejaria’s Liverpool Career Play Out?
Born in Southwark on November 18, 1997, Ejaria spent almost a decade in Arsenal’s youth system before Liverpool moved to sign him in 2014, a transfer that raised eyebrows given how highly regarded he was within Arsenal’s own academy setup.
He progressed steadily through Liverpool’s age groups and won caps for England at both under-20 and under-21 level, all while still eligible to represent Nigeria internationally through family heritage, a detail that occasionally surfaces whenever his name comes up in football conversation even now.
His breakthrough season under Klopp brought that League Cup debut at Derby along with a pair of Premier League substitute appearances, numbers that look modest on paper but represented a real foothold in one of the most competitive midfields in the country at the time, with Klopp overseeing a squad that included the likes of Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum, and Emre Can.
Rather than push him further into first-team contention, Liverpool’s coaching staff decided Ejaria would benefit more from senior football elsewhere, and that decision set the template for the rest of his career: a young player perpetually being loaned out to prove himself rather than given an extended run to do so at his parent club.
What went wrong during his loan spells at Sunderland and Rangers?
Ejaria’s first loan, to Sunderland in the 2017-18 season, landed him at a club in freefall, and he managed just 11 appearances and a single goal as the Black Cats were relegated from the Championship amid financial chaos that made it almost impossible for any individual player to shine.
It was hardly the platform a developing midfielder needed, and Liverpool moved him on again for the following campaign, this time sending him north of the border to Rangers under Steven Gerrard, who had just taken over at Ibrox and was building a squad capable of challenging Celtic’s dominance in Scotland.
There, Ejaria showed flashes of real quality, most notably during Rangers’ Europa League qualifying tie against FC Ufa in August 2018, when he scored the opening goal in a tense 1-1 draw in Russia that sealed the club’s passage into the group stage after Connor Goldson’s header had secured a narrow first-leg win at Ibrox.
Gerrard was effusive afterward, telling Rangers TV that Ejaria had been magnificent and that the performance represented his strongest ninety minutes in Rangers colours up to that point, praise that suggested a player finally settling into a system and a manager who believed in him.
That promise unraveled quickly.
Ejaria chose to cut his season-long loan short in December 2018 and returned to Liverpool, a decision that left Gerrard visibly frustrated.
He told the Glasgow Times at the time that he was disappointed the midfielder had gone and did not believe it was the right call, pointing out that Ejaria had walked away from what he considered an excellent opportunity to keep developing at a big club with European football and genuine title ambitions.
Rangers finished that season agonizingly close to Celtic, and Ejaria’s early exit remains one of those what-if moments Ibrox fans occasionally still bring up when his name resurfaces.
SEE ALSO | 10 Greatest Bargain Signings In Premier League History
His Move to Reading, And How Did It Collapse?
After returning to Liverpool, Ejaria was sent out again, this time to Reading, where he finally found some stability. He spent the 2019-20 season on loan at the Madejski Stadium, making 52 appearances across that extended, pandemic-disrupted campaign and scoring four goals, numbers that finally reflected the consistent midfield presence Liverpool had hoped to see from him years earlier.
Reading liked what they saw enough to make the move permanent, signing him on a four-year deal worth roughly £3.5 million in August 2020 that carried an annual salary in the region of £650,000, a significant commitment from a Championship club to a player still searching for his best level.
For a while it looked like the right decision for both parties.
Ejaria became a regular fixture in Reading’s midfield, racking up 72 appearances and five goals across four seasons at the club and establishing himself as one of the more technically accomplished players outside the Premier League.
Injuries, though, increasingly disrupted his rhythm, chipping away at the consistency that had made him attractive to Reading in the first place, and by December 2023 the two parties agreed to part ways by mutual consent, cutting short a contract that still had time left to run and leaving Ejaria, for the first time in his career, without a club to call his own.
SEE ALSO | Osimhen: From Selling Bottled Water In Traffic To A Superstar In Istanbul
What Happened During His Year Away From Football
The period that followed was arguably the toughest stretch of Ejaria’s career so far. He went the better part of three years without a competitive appearance in senior club football, training alone or in small groups while trialing with a scattered mix of clubs that included Oxford United and Plymouth Argyle in England, as well as a reported trial with Egyptian giants Zamalek, none of which produced a contract offer that stuck.
For a player who had once shared a dressing room with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané at Anfield, the drop into extended unemployment must have felt disorienting, a reminder of just how quickly football can move on from players who lose momentum through injury or circumstance.
Real Oviedo eventually offered him a route back into the professional game, signing him in August 2025 following the Spanish club’s promotion to La Liga, a move that gave Ejaria a real top-flight opportunity for the first time since his brief taste of Premier League football years earlier.
It did not go smoothly.
Injuries plagued his time in Asturias, including a hamstring problem that sidelined him for several weeks in the autumn and a more serious issue that kept him out from early December through into March, and he managed only eight league appearances across the entire campaign as Oviedo struggled and were ultimately relegated back to the Spanish second division.
Despite having time left on his contract, Ejaria left the club this past summer, closing another short, injury-interrupted chapter.
Why is Ejaria Turning To LinkedIn
With the traditional summer transfer window closed and no move materializing, Ejaria took the unusual step this week of posting directly on LinkedIn, a platform normally reserved for coaches, executives, and off-field football staff rather than players.
He introduced himself plainly, describing himself as a free agent looking for the right opportunity, listing his primary position as central midfield across the six, eight, and ten roles, with a secondary option as a left winger, and noting that he is 28 years old and based in London.
He ran through his club history, from Liverpool through Sunderland, Rangers, Reading, and Real Oviedo, and invited anyone connected to a club in need of a midfielder or wide option to send him a direct message, attaching a three-minute highlight reel that included clips from Oviedo’s La Liga defeat to Atletico Madrid.
The post is unusual precisely because being a free agent outside the transfer window is not actually the constraint it sounds like.
Clubs can sign unattached players at any point in the year regardless of when the domestic windows open or close, which is exactly why Ejaria’s approach makes practical sense even if it looks unconventional from the outside, essentially functioning as a public advertisement to widen the net beyond whatever his current representation has managed to turn up.
It is not the first time a professional footballer has used LinkedIn in this way, but the attention it has generated, from outlets covering both the Liverpool and Rangers angles of his career, suggests it could become something of a template for other players caught in similar limbo further down the football pyramid.
SEE ALSO | The Sad Decline of Ansu Fati: From Teen Sensation to Afterthought
What Comes Next For Him?
At 28, Ejaria is still comfortably within the window where a midfielder with his technical profile and Premier League, Championship, Scottish, and La Liga experience should be able to find a new home, provided he can stay fit for a sustained stretch, something that has eluded him at almost every stop since leaving Reading.
His versatility across multiple midfield roles and the left flank gives him more routes into a squad than a pure specialist might have, and the volume of media coverage his LinkedIn post has already generated only increases the odds that the right club picks up the phone.
Be it he ends up being in England, back in Scotland, another spell in Spain, or somewhere else entirely remains to be seen, but for a player who once walked out at Anfield as one of Liverpool’s most promising academy graduates, the road back into regular first-team football now runs, rather improbably, through a networking site built for office workers rather than centre-midfielders.
