There wasn’t much for Liverpool fans to enjoy during a wretched 2025/26 campaign, but one major positive was the emergence of Rio Ngumoha.
This time last year the teenager was catching the eye on the Reds’ pre-season tour to the Far East, and within 12 months, he made his Premier League debut (in which he scored a 100th-minute winner) and also won his first senior England cap.
It’s been quite a rise to prominence for the 17-year-old, whose captivating dribbling skills whip Kopites into a frenzy of excitement, just like the thrill of a Dance Bet game.
Ngumoha made 29 first-team appearances for Liverpool last season and started the final three Premier League games of that campaign – can he now hold down a regular berth in the first XI under new head coach Andoni Iraola?
One challenge the teenager will face is added competition for a place on the left flank with the summer signing of Victor Munoz from Osasuna, even though the new arrival will have a heavily curtailed pre-season following his involvement with the World Cup-winning Spain squad.
Cody Gakpo remains the most proven left-sided option, but one of those players could potentially be redeployed on the right, where squad depth is much thinner (Federico Chiesa is the only natural senior right winger at Anfield currently).
Could we see Ngumoha being shifted over to that side as Mo Salah’s successor on the starting XI, leaving the left flank to either Munoz or Gakpo? It’s something with which Iraola might experiment in pre-season, although the 17-year-old has almost solely played on the left at Liverpool thus far.
The Reds will be involved in four tournaments yet again in 2026/27, and the new head coach has already spoken about the importance of squad depth to cope with those demands, especially when his team are expected to compete at the business end in each of them rather than merely participating.
We can therefore expect to see plenty of rotation between the players at his disposal, and with attacking options lessened by Salah’s exit and Hugo Ekitike’s Achilles injury, all of LFC’s forwards should theoretically be granted ample playing time.
Ngumoha has shown that he’s more than good enough to play in the Premier League, and even though his Champions League exposure thus far has been minimal, we’re fully confident that he’d thrive in that competition as well.
If (hypothetically) Iraola’s first competitive game with Liverpool were being played tomorrow and he had all of his World Cup players back, we believe that the 17-year-old would be in the starting XI, and we can expect to see him on the team sheet with increasing regularity over the next 12 months.
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