Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version or go back to LFC Live.net

Liverpool’s pre-season is officially over, with Sunday’s Community Shield against Crystal Palace signalling the start of the new campaign.

As usual, plenty was learnt during the summer friendlies, as the Reds embarked on a tour of Hong Kong and Japan.

With no summer international tournament to speak of this year, Arne Slot was able to call upon the majority of his Liverpool squad right from the first day of training.

In amongst that, several young players still managed to stand out, though.

And none shone brighter than 16-year-old Rio Ngumoha.

Ngumoha scored three times during pre-season, with a memorable strike against Athletic Bilbao just two minutes into Monday night’s game at Anfield underlining his potential.

There has been plenty of hype over Ngumoha, and a feeling that he could play a big part in the coming season.

“Rio had a good pre-season, it took him a while to adapt, which is quite normal if you are 16-years-old, to adapt to the level the first team train at,” said the Liverpool head coach.

“He used last season to be with us once in a while and in pre-season now he’s done really well, brings in the quality he has, not afraid to take a one-v-one on, making the right decisions if he feels his teammate is in a better position than him.

“I know how hard it is for 20 year olds, 25 year olds, 30 year olds to play every three days at this level,” Slot added.

“This is something we need to give him time for as well.

At this moment in time he’s not a regular starter, but for him to train every single day at this level is going to be really hard and tough, so let’s give him some time to adapt to everything, but he’s definitely had a promising start to this season.”

It is easy to get carried away with young players who come in and have an impact in pre-season.

Although he was not as much of a standout as Ngumoha has been this year, Nyoni was really impressive throughout the friendlies.

Once the season came around, some supporters had expected that the midfielder would be involved a decent amount.