Client-Server architecture

Hello. I have a rather long and perhaps silly question. Before I begin though, would like to apologise if this question has been answered before but I have done extensive research on the topic and couldn't find the exact same problem solved. So here's my situation:

I'm trying to make a multiplayer game. I am using the HLAPI but am not using NetworkManager. Instead I decided to use NetworkClient and NetworkServer because I would rather know how everything works and generally have more control. Now here's the problem I have encountered so far. I don't understand how am I supposed to actually create a GameObject that the player will control. In fact I cannot even instantiate the PlayerPrefab nor spawn it (atleast it doesn't show up in the inspector). Here's what I am doing right now:

1. Connecting to the server

2. The server loads a specific scene -> sends a message to the client to load the same scene.

3. The client loads the scene and tells the server it's done.

4. The server proceeds to instantiate and spawn a player prefab (nothing happens, although if I "print"out the spawned GameObject using Debug.Log, it doesn't return null)

What am I supposed to do now? I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could provide any sort of assistance as I have been stuck on this stage for about a week now.