Twenty years old and already the scapegoat for every poor performance. What a trajectory the lad is on.
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He was over hyped at the beginning of the season and now everyone is disappointed that heās not Messi mark 2.
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Some tend to do this hoping he will succeed in replacing a player they donāt like in this case he was better than our captain but in reality he is just a light weight kid learning the game.
I agree he is not a midfielder in this system but he lacks the swiftness to play up front.
He has always played well from the right. He limits our attacking ability compared to Mo but he looks much more natural and offers better vision and incisive passing than Salah. Heād be fine as a backup/change of style option on the wing.
Clearly he needs more time on the training ground to adapt to central midfield.
Think Klopp thought āthis kid is special. Can not wait until Mo gets injured or needs a break to give Harvey minutes in the first team. Curtis, Naby and Ox are injured. Milner needed as RB cover. Letās try Elliott in midfieldā
Is everyone missing the part where he started the last season fucking awesomely - in midfield - before a Leeds player snapped his ankle in half? (Edit: may have been season before.)
I thought he was always earmarked for midfield, at least since Jurgen brought him to Liverpool? Although heās a little short and displays neither the trickery not the pure strength to overcome that lack of size (Iām not at all suggesting a lack of skill btw), I agree with Jurgen and midfield is where he should be. A bad run of form recently and this has become the Harvey Elliott Revisionism Thread.
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I agree that he has been earmarked for midfield, and I do think that is where he will end up, but currently I just donāt like what he is bringing to the role. Heās more suited to being but wide currently, even if it means playing a bit less.
He can continue to learn CM and make mistakes in training. Iām fine with young players making mistakes, unfortunately to me it just seems like he fundamentally does not understand what is required (and I sort of donāt blame him in the sense that the system is fucking stupid anyway).
But itās what heās bringing to the role due to his lack of understanding of the role, having a role unsuited to him, through bad form, or all three?
Of course when analysing players, you need to take the good and bad play together to get some context of the value of what they are bringing, but Harvey is very clearly down right now. You can see that with his attitude, and you can see he doesnāt have the usual confidence that her expresses. Making any decisions or judgements when a player is it of confidence to me doesnāt seem appropriate.
Itās strange because prior to the WC, I remember at least one game where in my eyes Harvey was a clear best on ground. There may have even been two of those games. And I think the polls reflected that as well. Iām almost certain he was playing from midfield then too.
For me itās absolutely normal for a 19yo to lose a bit of form. IMO itās also not panic stations given he has played well recently, but I would also like him shielded from that bad form by the manager if possible and not have to play through it like a man like itās 1975.
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Weāre engaging in really open games of football with a very slow midfield. Elliot is the worst midfielder on the books when it comes to the defensive side of the game. Heās on the same side as Trent who has struggled this season.
Itās a recipe for disaster. Ideally, if he was to play in a midfield 3 it would be with 2 players who can get through lots of dirty work. But, he also needs to produce more in an attacking sense.
Heās not the scapegoat, he isnāt the reason the team is playing poorly, but there is absolutely no good sense in continuing with him in that position right now when heās offering nothing offensively and exacerbating defensive issues.
The other options arenāt great either. The solution is to buy more suitable players, anything else is likely to have mediocre results at best. Bajcetic offers a better blend of attributes than Elliot for this piss weak midfield but I really donāt want us throwing that on an 18 year oldās shoulders either. Keita should quite obviously be starting if heās fit enough too, but thatās a big if.
I still fail to see how playing Gomez at right back and Trent in that wide right sided 8 position would be worse than playing Elliot, but thatās my thing. I highly doubt weāll see that even once, there seems to be no acknowledgement from the management that our right flank has been an unmitigated disaster this season.
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In other words, itās the typical trajectory of any talented English youngster. Nothing new under the sky here.
Neither Goetze nor Reus were any quicker and did fine playing as a forward under Klopp.
I seem to be a little at odds with many here where I see the front line as a big part of the issues weāve had pressing properly. This version of our front line has lost Mane, and more often than not Bobby, and just isnt as effective at forcing the opposition to play into a specific area of the pitch we want them to. That means by the time the ball makes it way to the midfield they have more or less the entire width of the pitch to play in, and you just cannot press in such a big space. Theyāre left having to read the situation to identify the opportunities to press rather than doing it as a default, and the challenge with that is it requires everyone to see the same thing and respond at the same time to it. When that doesnt happen youāre just a dickhead chasing a ball you cannot win 10 yards ahead of all your team mates with a big space behind you that is now easy to exploit. Itās a harder game to play than simply pressing as a default, and I think Harvey with his youth and inexperience is struggling a bit there in ways that just compound the issue of whether the midfield has got enough in their legs to get effective pressure on the ball.
Yep, Klopp has always said that the purpose of the press high up is that it means the options further down the pitch for passes by the opposition are squeezed to such an extent that in effect, any energy expended high up the pitch is saved for the midfielders (naturally the positions that have to cover the most ground in a Klopp system) and also by the defenders.
Iām not sure weāve ever been a āpress for a full 90 minsā team, even in those games against City all those years ago. But we at least worked as a cohesive unit from attackers to midfielders? Players see a press high up? Fellow forwards and midfielders move into position to press the next receiver or cut off the passing lanes to the next receivers. That little glance over both shoulders that Bobby always did prior to pressing was to surely check that he plus the team behind him were all in a good pressing situation for him to even try that.
Right now the pressing is a little embarrassing. I remember that first game of Robboās where he went and chased after the ball from 4 or 5 players in a row. The crowd loved it I recall but it really was not the point of the Klopp press. Thatās what I saw Hendo do I think last game. Just charged forward (defender or keeper I donāt know which) but no-one else was either ready, or bothered, to press. We are totally incohesive. Do we trust eachother? Can Kloppo organise some trust-fall games to fix this pronto? Are some players lazy (would be hard to believe)?
I canāt tell how often we attempt to press any more because its so far from what a press looks like that their version of it is alien to me. I thought it was about making the pitch smaller when you donāt have the ball as a means to conserve energy, but frankly, when we donāt have the ball, the pitch is looking bigger than it has ever been.
Mane was exceptional at pressing at the right moments, and thatās a big loss. Unfortunately as much as I love him Nunez when without the ball looks a bit clueless in terms of pressing and is very much the old school CF during those moments of transition. Diaz and Jota were a bit better but neither can replace what Mane was doing IMO. Maybe Iām just partaking in a bit of revisionism myself when it comes to Mane and he wasnāt all that in pressing situations. Yeah, nah. Fuck knows.
EDIT: I see I repeated some of what you said @Limiescouse .I hadnāt read through your hole message and stopped after two sentences. You had me at Mane.
People always stop when they get to the point of my message where I discuss my hole 
On a more serious note, an old coach of mine used to describe the responsibility of the forwards in a high press as more akin to a sheep dog than grey hound. Youāre not trying to catch them, youāre just trying to squeeze them into the area you want them to be in.
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That might be why people stop.
Is it as simple as turnover (ManĆ© leaving) + injuries to players who āget itā (Bobby, Jota) + new players (NĆŗƱez, Carvalho) not yet having time to learn their job?
He needs movement and players showing for the ball and tends to play better when Bobby is there as he is always showing for the ball
Ye p totally agree on the sheepdog analogy once they shepherd them into those positions with back up, they can then go full out to win the ball
If he really is your typical talented Englishman, he will be shipped off to the left wing.
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This kid is not even 20 and he has been generally good over the 46 games (2623 mins) he has played for us. Everyone is entitled to have a bad game once in a while.
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