Protecting Rio

Everyone wants Rio Ngumoha to play more but Liverpool have a duty of care to the youngster. What does history tell us about young stars who burst onto the scene?

If you’ve seen Rio Ngumoha play, you want to see him play more. He seems to lift Liverpool every time he is on the pitch. This was set in stone when he scored a 100th minute winner at Newcastle last August.

Think also of the two other league matches in which stoppage time goals have earned victories for Liverpool this season. Ngumoha came on in the 87th minute at Burnley to set up what was only the Reds’ third shot on target of the match.

There was a similar outcome against Nottingham Forest, in that the 17-year-old could easily have set up the winner for Hugo Ekitike. Even when less impactful against West Ham, his six touches included a shot on target, a key pass and a tackle in the final third. Ngumoha is impact incarnate.

His sample size is miniscule so ultimately of no significance but he possesses the best expected assists per 90 minutes average in the 2025/26 Premier League. He has made things happen in the few opportunities he has had to impress.

Jamie Carragher called for the young man to feature more regularly following his City Ground cameo. “Ngumoha did more in 15 minutes than [Mohamed] Salah and [Cody] Gakpo did before that. He changed the game and needs to be starting games,” he said.

Arne Slot has inevitably had to field questions about whether his young winger should be featuring more. “His playing time has improved massively over the last few weeks and the reason for that is because he developed, he became a better player,” he said recently.

The challenge when managing younger footballers is balancing their need to play with protecting their long term future. Ngumoha sits 12th in the modern era for minutes played for Liverpool before turning 18. He should pass Steven Gerrard before the season is out, probably by the end of this week.

Most minutes played for Liverpool before turning 18

A more recent name on the list offers a warning. Stefan Bajčetić clocked up exactly 1,000 minutes before officially becoming a man. He has added just 56 more for the Reds in the three years since, with injuries blighting his progress.

Look at the absurd minutes total accumulated by Michael Owen though. He’s in Liverpool’s top 10 players for minutes accumulated by their 21st birthdays with this playing time alone. The later cost of this was clear. By the time he left for Madrid at the end of his age 23 season, Owen had played what would prove to be almost 71 per cent of his career club minutes.

As an extreme an example as he may be, the potential pitfalls with overplaying young talent are obvious. At the same time, could Slot use Ngumoha more often than he has without running him into the ground? Raheem Sterling, the next man on the Liverpool list, is an interesting point for comparison.

He’d played fewer than half Owen’s minutes when they each turned 18 yet had amassed more than his predecessor’s career total before his age 25 campaign drew to a close.

While his graph will change in future as his career is not yet over, it’s hard to imagine that a 31-year-old with under 1,200 minutes played since the start of last season is on anything other than a downward slope. Owen logged 1,134 in the corresponding campaigns age-wise, for the record.

These cautionary tales are just two examples, of course. There’s unfortunately no easy way to compile data on every player that burst onto the scene as a teenager. Some burn out quickly, others have sustained success well into their thirties.

Returning to our list of Liverpool players who emerged early, we find Robbie Fowler next. Almost half of his career club minutes (47.5%) had been logged by the end of the 1998/99 season, shortly after he turned 24. Trent Alexander-Arnold comes next in the standings, with the right-back having not played more than 60.6 per cent of the possible minutes in a campaign since his age 23 season (2022/23).

Career trajectories can’t work out the same way for everyone, nor have the same explanation for panning out as they did. It isn’t injuries that have restricted Harvey Elliott’s playing time over the previous 16 months even though he played a lot as a teenager (much of which was on loan from Liverpool).

Ryan Giggs was still playing over 2,200 minutes in his age 36 season having made his debut 20 years earlier. Perhaps you just need to [SUPERINJUNCTION] your brother’s [REDACTED] to ensure your career works out fine.

Football is more demanding now than in Giggs’ day. More intense, more matches, more domestic opponents of a decent standard in England. One has to wonder about what lies in wait for the likes of Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka and Lamine Yamal down the line given how much playing time they’ve already accumulated.

Hell, Florian Wirtz put in serious yards in his teenage years. Ryan Gravenberch was the youngest debutant in the history of Ajax. Talent that good breaks through.

Fears from players past do not change the fact Ngumoha needs to play more to develop. If you search FBRef for minutes in all competitions by players of his exact age, the Liverpool #73 ranks 558th. It’s a list headed by Freddy Adu, another famous name that carries a warning of what may lie ahead.

A familiar name in the top 10

It’s interesting to see which players are in the vicinity of Rio. He’s 12 minutes ahead of Jérémy Doku, just over half an hour behind Dušan Vlahović. Ngumoha has made more Champions League appearances than Lionel Messi had at 17 years and 185 days, so he’s clearly a GOAT in waiting.

If we only look at midfielders and forwards, our subject moves up to 433rd in the standings. It’s unsurprising that there aren’t hundreds of similarly callow goalkeepers and defenders (especially centre-backs) getting experience. Even so, it should be possible to give Ngumoha more pitch time without risk of burning him out.

It’s important that we don’t criticise the club without the full picture. Josh Williams mentioned in a recent episode of Distance Covered that he heard from an anonymous source in the know that “Rio does a full training session with the team and he's in the red zone.” Assuming that’s true, cautious use of Ngumoha is understandable.

The circumstance of game state has not been on his side either. Liverpool would have imagined they’d be comfortably winning far more games when the season began, giving them ample opportunities to grant Ngumoha pitch time. Instead, the 5-2 victory over West Ham was the first Premier League match the Reds were winning at the point at which he entered the fray.

This chart again highlights how the Reds have usually improved when the youngster has featured. Only against Nottingham Forest at Anfield did the score line deteriorate, with the goal scored immediately after the restart that followed Ngumoha’s introduction.

Liverpool have to protect Rio. They can’t cynically run him into the ground now with no regard for the state of his body in the mid 2030s. But they also have to protect him from other clubs who will offer him greater playing time. His talent merits more appearances. It’s not an easy balance for Slot to strike.