'I was England's next big thing like Rio Ngumoha - here's my crucial advice for Liverpool starlet'

Rio Ngumoha

Few players can truly grasp the weight of being hailed as a future superstar, but Darren Bent does.

The former Premier League striker once carried the same burden, tipped in his youth as England's next great hope.

For Rio Ngumoha, that spotlight arrived early. In August, just days before turning 17, he etched his name into Liverpool's history books with a dramatic stoppage-time winner against Newcastle.

In an instant, he became the club's youngest-ever goalscorer - a moment that signalled the arrival of a prodigy potentially destined for English football greatness.

Fans, pundits, and even team-mates have been left stunned by his maturity and talent at such a tender age. But brilliance, inevitably, invites expectation, and expectation can quickly become a heavy burden

Bent, who walked the same tightrope between potential and pressure while breaking through at Ipswich, has offered some crucial advice for the Reds starlet.

Bent

"He's got to surround himself with good people, i think that's really important.”

"He should surround himself with people who are going to keep him grounded. Because again, especially nowadays with social media, fans will turn you into a superstar before you become a superstar.

"You've got hundreds and thousands of followers, millions of followers. You play for one of the biggest clubs in the world. People are going to be saying all sorts to you.

"You need to have people around you... who are going to tell you maybe when you're not pulling your weight, when maybe you need to be told this isn't good enough.

“You need these people around you... people that are going to tell you what you need to hear as opposed to what you want to hear."

Bent also warned Ngumoha to be cautious of those who dangle glittering offers, but whose intentions are rooted not in his success, but in their own gain.

Bent added

"You don't need to be making any new friends because trust me, they're going to come. They're going out the woodwork,"

"They're going to be offering you everything, saying that they can look after you, they can do this for you, they can do that for you, when they know they've only got their self-interest at heart."

Bent, now a pundit for talkSPORT, is one of just 34 players to have scored 100 or more Premier League goals.

He enjoyed notable spells at Tottenham, Aston Villa, Charlton, and Sunderland over the course of a lengthy career in the top flight.

He is also remembered for one of the most infamous goals in English football history: in 2009, while playing for the Black Cats against Liverpool, his shot struck a beach ball thrown onto the pitch by a Reds fan, ricocheting past a bewildered Pepe Reina.

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