Harvey Elliott will not play at Anfield on Saturday. Which, in its own way, could suit everyone. With a loanee ineligible, Liverpool are spared the possibility of being condemned to a seventh defeat in eight games by a player they discarded after their record spending spree. Unai Emery, meanwhile, will not face questions about why he has not picked a signing who, if his loan becomes permanent, will become Aston Villa’s biggest buy of 2026.
Elliott did not play at Anfield much last season, either. Not from the start, anyway. He began only five matches and just one, an FA Cup win over Accrington, on home soil. If the last few weeks may have made Liverpool far more nostalgic for the Jurgen Klopp era, Elliott may have felt such pangs for the recent past long before many another. He started 27 games in the German’s valedictory campaign. His tally of 53 appearances was the second highest in the squad (second only to Darwin Nunez, another since directed to the Anfield exit) and he chalked up 14 assists.
Elliott could seem the likeable lad who divides footballing opinion. He seemed part of Klopp’s legacy. He ended his England Under-21 career as the player of the tournament as Lee Carsley’s team retained their European Championships crown. And he has spent the last 16 months of his club career under Arne Slot and Emery, managers who do not seem to rate him; or not highly enough, anyway.
Emery excluded Elliott from the matchday squad for Sunday’s win over Manchester City. And if the injury Emi Buendia suffered could have offered a route back, Elliott appears at the back of the queue for the creative roles. That Villa have a conditional obligation to buy him after a certain number of appearances – thought to be 10, and he is on five – offers reasons to exclude him if there is any doubt. He had been an unused substitute for their previous three matches. He scored Villa’s belated first goal of the season, at Brentford in the Carabao Cup, but his lone league start, at Fulham in September, was curtailed at half-time in September.
Emery’s explanation was tactical. “Harvey is a No 10 in our structure, in our shape,” he said last week of a player incongruously given the No 9 shirt. “We have other players who can play as a 10. He can maybe play wide right, like John McGinn, but he will need more time.”
Some of it stands up to scrutiny. There are players who have taken time to adapt to his exacting demands and gone on to excel: last season’s outstanding individual Youri Tielemans is a case in point. But in Villa’s revolving-door recruitment, there are also others, like Jaden Philogene and Moussa Diaby, who came and went quickly as the Spaniard seemed to change his mind.
If the nature of Villa’s squad means Emery has a host of players who can operate in what are, in effect, three No 10 positions, and the primacy of the captain McGinn and Morgan Rogers renders it harder for anyone else, Buendia’s unexpected renaissance may have come at a cost to the newcomer. But a further issue is that Elliott, brought in late on deadline day, scarcely appeared to top Emery’s wishlist. Marco Asensio and Lucas Paqueta were both ahead of him. Others may have been.
Last month, fresh from his debut, imbued with optimism, Elliott had pronounced himself “blown away” by Emery. “I think working under him is going to be the best thing for me, as long as he trusts me,” he said. Those last six words may assume a new significance now.
A lifelong Liverpool fan said he had to be “selfish” in leaving, looking for first-team football. He attracted interest elsewhere, though not joining a dysfunctional West Ham under a manager, in Graham Potter, who would soon be sacked may class as a lucky escape. But RB Leipzig offered intrigue: their parent company’s Global Head of Soccer is a certain Jurgen Klopp.
If the regime change from Klopp to Slot worked against him, so did the tactical shift from 4-3-3, in which Elliott played a lot, to 4-2-3-1. Slot argued it put him in competition with Dominik Szoboszlai and Mohamed Salah for the No 10 and right-wing roles, and that was even before Florian Wirtz’s arrival. He arguably lacks the acceleration to be a winger. But he did indicate he can be a player of substance, showing he both possesses creativity and the ability to be a terrific substitute: his Parc des Princes winner against Paris Saint-Germain came in a cameo.
It made him look a talented player in search of the right club and manager. Villa, their dealings constrained by PSR, their lack of available funds meaning a deal where payment could be postponed until next year making Elliott appear more attractive, may not be it. From Liverpool’s perspective, Elliott will not be recalled from loan or sent back. But they may have been banking on getting £35m for him soon. And perhaps Villa are weighing up whether they want to pay it. Elliott was always going to watch on from the sidelines on Saturday. The danger is that he does rather more often.
