Liverpool’s season is going just fine. Arne Slot has taken to the Premier League seamlessly, taken it by storm, and will be confident in his first-placed side’s chances of lifting the title come May.
Of course, rivals will be looking to improve both internally and with an eye on the 2025 windows. Arsenal, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest are snapping at the Reds’ heels from afar but Slot will want to maintain Liverpool’s position over the coming years.
Manchester City’s dismal form will improve at some stage, and they will be back in the title picture. While FSG will be looking for ways to improve the squad in the transfer market, there’s also a growing cluster of academy products looking to break onto the senior stage.
In the years to come, picking out the next Steven Gerrard might be crucial for Anfield’s sustained success.
Liverpool's best youth players
Liverpool have operated with a quality-over-quantity tint to their youth system over the past few decades, giving rise to some exhilarating journeys with some top players.
Gerrard is the cream of the crop and perhaps always will be, but Trent Alexander-Arnold is a homemade sensation with a similar standing at the moment, Slot’s vice-captain and Liverpool’s main creative force.
Coming through the ranks at the moment: many, many youngsters. It’s a new era of teenage talent production on Merseyside, Alexander-Arnold joined by Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott, Conor Bradley and Jarell Quansah in establishing roles in the first team across the past several years, each making their breakthrough at different times.
Rio Ngumoha was poached from Chelsea in the summer and looks like he could be a real prodigy, while Stefan Bajcetic and Ben Doak are both making headway on respective loan moves – both players will fancy themselves apt for first-team inclusion in the years to come.
Some top talent, but it’s Trey Nyoni who might just be the pick of the bunch.
Trey Nyoni could be the best thing since Trent
Still only 17, Nyoni has already made 35 appearances for Liverpool’s respective development sides, notching seven goals and two assists and invariably catching the eye.
He’s a “star in the making” alright, as scout Antonio Mango has said, and might just be Liverpool’s biggest talent since Alexander-Arnold, who has featured 333 times for Liverpool since breaking from the academy ranks. Widely regarded as one of the best full-backs in the world, the 26-year-old is a playmaking genius.
Alexander-Arnold is the Red poster boy on Merseyside, Liverpool’s golden child, the best homegrown player since Gerrard strut his stuff, wrote his name into the history books with indelible ink.
But Nyoni could be next. Oh sure, he’s a product of Leicester City’s youth academy, signing for Liverpool in the summer of 2023, but the 2007-born talent is fostering his raw qualities at Kirkby and Liverpool have every intention of reaping all the benefits.
In The Pipeline
Football FanCast's In the Pipeline series aims to uncover the very best youth players in world football.
Praised for his “exceptional” progress with the Reds by reporter Neil Jones, Nyoni’s age-belying inclusions by Jurgen Klopp and now Slot suggest that he has all the skills to succeed in the big time and the temperament to match.
Central midfield
10
1
0
Attacking midfield
7
4
1
Centre-forward
1
0
0
Right winger
1
0
0
Left winger
1
0
0
As you can see, he’s usually placed in the centre of the park for the U21s, though seems to have something of a Midas touch in front of goal on those occasions where he is placed in a looser, more attacking role.
Gerrard, anyone? Nyoni might not be a carbon copy of Liverpool’s most iconic player of all time, but he does have the properties to thrive as an all-encompassing midfield powerhouse, with analyst Ben Mattinson claiming that he carries “so much resemblance to former Manchester United star Paul Pogba, who, for all the controversy, was an incredibly gifted footballer.
Having taken steps into the senior Liverpool set-up already, Nyoni is ready to explode at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Alexander-Arnold may be leaving in 2025; he may not be. Whatever happens there, Liverpool have a prodigy with the potential to go right to the top in Trey Nyoni.
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