Unleash Rio! Liverpool wonderkid Ngumoha needs run of starts as Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo continue to toil

Liverpool were privately chuffed with themselves after convincing Ngumoha to swap Stamford Bridge for Anfield during the summer of 2024, but the Reds unsurprisingly did their utmost to publicly play down the hype surrounding a player already being touted as 'the new Raheem Sterling'.

However, John Terry's disappointment at seeing Chelsea lose "a top, top player" to a Premier League rival told us everything we needed to know about Ngumoha's world-class potential.

"He is a very ambitious boy who wanted to play first-team football and believed that was his pathway into Liverpool's first team. I’m still in contact with him, but he's just a fantastic player," Terry told The Sun. "We had a really good Under-14 team and he was a big part of that. You don't see too many players that are exciting like him anymore. There's going to be many more over the years that as an academy you lose, but there's always one that you think, 'I'm a bit gutted we missed out on that one.'

"He was a very confident player, taking the ball on the back foot, lots of personality, very confident in himself. Since the likes of [Eden] Hazard and Joe Cole and those types of players that are very confident and get the fans off their seat as well... I think football's become a little bit stale and a little bit kind of tactical over the last four or five years."

It didn't take long for Slot to come to the same conclusion as Terry, that Ngumoha was a rare, crowd-pleasing talent capable of bamboozling senior pros with his devastating dribbling skills.

"Every time when he comes training with us we see what his qualities are," Slot said after a 16-year-old Ngumoha became the youngest player to ever represent Liverpool in the FA Cup during last season's third-round tie against Accrington Stanley at Anfield. "He can dominate one-v-one situations, he is very quick on his feet, he can change directions really fast.

"So, I’m always happy if a player makes his debut and he shows what we see on the training ground, so the fans can see it too. And you could feel this from the reaction of the fans in the stadium in the first half and when I took him off - they liked what they saw."

They were even more impressed by Ngumoha's pre-season performances last summer, though.

Ngumoha netted in the friendly wins over Stoke City, Yokohama F. Marinos and Athletic Club, but what really excited the fans was his bravery on the ball, a very blatant belief in his ability to make something happen each and every time he got on the ball. He looked so good, in fact, that the inevitable departure of wantaway winger Luis Diaz didn't feel that disappointing, particularly as Cody Gakpo was also looking sharp in pre-season.

In that sense, it was easy to get on board with the club's reported belief that there was no real need to sign a direct replacement for Diaz, as Ngumoha would make for a wonderful understudy for Gakpo. The youngster really did look ready to make a major impact during the 2025-26 campaign - and that's exactly what he did on August 25, when he came off the bench to net a wonderfully well-taken 100th-minute winner at Newcastle that made him the youngest goal-scorer in Liverpool's history.

"I’m 16 but I don't want my age to show that I can’t play with the older players," Ngumoha said after his historic strike at St. James' Park. "I want to prove a point that I can play with not just people my age but many ages above... There are people at the club who are always helping me and I’m always learning and improving, so I can't complain."

Others, though, have long since started to complain on Ngumoha's behalf, as he's seen just 88 minutes of Premier League action since that dramatic 3-2 win on Tyneside.

Slot is 100 percent right to protect Ngumoha from the threat of burnout. It's no coincidence that some of English football's most talented teenagers, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney and Sterling, were pretty much spent by the time they were 30, after being over-played when their bodies were still developing.

It's a point that Slot even made while discussing an injury to another promising young Liverpool player, Jayden Danns, before last month's FA Cup clash with Barnsley.

"Jayden is not fit enough to play," the Dutchman told reporters. "He's not even training, if I'm correct. He's one of the players that got a stress fracture because he was young and, from what we've been told, was a bit over-trained. That's why we are so careful with Rio Ngumoha, that he's two days a week off the pitch if that's possible, to not have that same situation with him."

It's certainly a wise approach. If properly taken care of, Ngumoha could be an extremely valuable asset for Liverpool for the next 15 years, and it should not be forgotten that, after starting against Barnsley, he was cramping up before being brought off in the 73rd minute.

"It tells you - and it tells Rio - that it's still very hard work to be ready for 90 minutes in the Premier League, which is even more intense than [the FA Cup]," Slot pointed out. "But that's completely normal for a 17-year-old, make no mistake about that. It's already great for him and for Liverpool and for everybody following us that a 17-year-old makes so many minutes in a Liverpool shirt.

"So, let's hope he can continue and we can bring him further and further towards 90 minutes at Premier League level."

The thing is, though, that nobody is arguing that Ngumoha should be playing every minute of every Premier League match at such a tender age. It wouldn't be beneficial to his physical development, while it would also be grossly unfair from a mental perspective to cast him as some sort of saviour.

Slot is also correct when he says that no other 17-year-old has seen as much Premier League game time as Ngumoha this season - but he's not even played a combined 90 minutes across his nine appearances over the past six months, so it's a tad disingenuous to argue that he's even at risk of being overburdened, particularly when one considers that he's featured just four times in England's top-flight since Liverpool lost 3-0 at home to Nottingham Forest on November 22.

It's only natural, then, that fans - and ex-players - are calling for Ngumoha to be given more game time, after adding a different dimension to Slot's side after coming on for the closing stages of Sunday's return clash at the City Ground.

"Ngumoha did more in 15 minutes than Salah and Gakpo did before that," former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher said on Sky Sports. "He changed the game and needs to be starting games. I think at some stage, Rio Ngumoha has got to come into the team... I think Liverpool's penetration and pace in the wide areas is really lacking."

The form of Gakpo and Salah is certainly problematic - as it pretty much has been all season long.

Gakpo was never going to be a like-for-like replacement for Diaz, but the expectation was that after looking far more comfortable out wide last season, he would at least match the Colombian for output. So far, though, the Dutchman has been directly involved in just 11 goals in 35 appearances, after 25 in 49 during Liverpool's title triumph. Consequently, it's not just Diaz's dribbles that are being missed on the left wing, but also his end product.

Of course, Gakpo's dip in form is nothing compared to that of Salah, who activated 'god mode' last year by equalling the goals and assists (47) record for a single Premier League campaign - and in fewer games - but is now performing like a mere mortal such as Bukayo Saka (10 goal involvements apiece this season).

That alarming drop-off, coupled with Liverpool's set-piece struggles, explains why a team that ran away with the league is suddenly struggling to finish in the top five. Such disappointingly diminishing returns also make it impossible to justify continuing to start Salah - and particularly Gakpo - in each and every game while Ngumoha is restricted to 10 minutes of action once every three-to-four weeks.

Slot obviously has various other issues to consider. First and foremost, he had to do right by Ngumoha. After all, teenagers sometimes need to be protected from themselves. But Ngumoha says himself that he's ready, willing and - most importantly of all - able to play more matches. What's more, Slot's previous argument that there are always much better options on the wing no longer stands up to scrutiny. Dreadfully ineffective displays from Salah and Gakpo made that painfully clear against Forest on Sunday.

So, while Ngumoha doesn't necessarily have to start Liverpool's next two league games, at home to West Ham this weekend and away to Wolves on Tuesday, there really wouldn't be any excuse for keeping him on the bench for both. He deserves more minutes; Gakpo definitely does not. When it comes to selecting the side for Saturday's outing at Anfield, it really should be as simple as that for Slot.

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