You don’t know that though. Slot decided he didn’t fancy Elliott and won the league. I think when you win the league, criticising decisions like that is a bit redundant.
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Exactly! He needs to be given a chance to show what he can do. He has the talent.
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Chelsea wasted a huge amount of young talent (Salah, De Bryne, Lukaku etc) Mourinho won the league but no one would argue that he made the correct decision by not integrating them properly into the first team. He does not get a free pass.
It’s such a stark contrast to Klopp and how he made young players feel. Still remember him bringing on Tyler Morton against Arsenal (before playing full game against Porto).
Low trust in youngsters is a failing of a manger. When you’re winning that is the absolutely is the best time.
If your 13 points ahead in the league and you still can’t trust younger players with game time that is poor management (especially if your relaxed enough about the league your taking the team to Ibiza mid season).
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We ourselves have a manager who simultaneously said “I need to use more players next season if Im going to be able to compete on all fronts” and still felt that one of the best U21s in Europe was not a fit in that new broader perspective. It would have only made sense to bring him back had there been a manager here willing to use him. It seems apparent that was not the case.
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If Slot has written off Harvey, then there is an onus of responsibility on the club to act in the best interests of the player.
The obvious solution would be removing the buy clause with some additional compensation.
If both clubs had no intention of playing him, he should have been recalled. So can work with the club to find his next move, train with his teammates, and on a personal level be close to friends and family. As a club we had a financial interest to ensure he remains fit, sharp and mentally in the right place.
I could understand the approach of not wanting him back if he was like Balotelli. But letting him rot in villa reserves/U21s was terrible leadership.
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They deferred a £30m fee for a year and let Villa loan him so he could go to the club of his choice. It’s hard to know what more they could have done to act in his best interests.
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@ISMF has already answered that in his next paragraph.
Agreed @Mascot. The key lesson here, which I can’t believe our side didn’t realise, is we should NEVER give another club a free option like this without a significant non negotiable fee (even if it is deferred) for the privilege. It’s outrageous that we’d be so unprofessional as to agree to such an arrangement where a club can simply have our player for nothing with an option to play, buy or dump him. Our loan agreements are tighter, ffs. Personally I’d fire the person responsible for signing off on the deal it was that egregious.
We are far too concerned about what a player wants in the moment. Had we told Harvey, sure you want to go to Villa but if they don’t sign a watertight agreement to buy (can be deferred etc) then they don’t actually want you enough and you are much better going to German club etc and stuck to our guns, then Harvey would either have gone with that or stayed and left in January. A bit more paternalism and telling players what is possible would be good, especially with young guys who really just want to play football. Harvey loved (loves?) liverpool and if we had sat him down it could have been heard and also heard by other players who may face similar. Instead we’ve come out looking shite because we weakly tried to do another club a favour and have ended up hurting the player we were trying to help.
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I don’t believe there is any evidence of this.
My understanding is multiple clubs were interested in the summer (after Slot told him he has no future) and they all pulled out due to the clubs asking price.
Villa made a deadline day deal (without Villa manager knowing the details. Hence later stand off) . This was the only deal on the table.
To be honest I don’t think Harvey wanted out. He wanted minutes and was prepared to fight for them.
He had two options. Stay at a club were manager didnt want him, or take a loan at Villa.
Norhing about this was about his best interests.
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I think he can get a chance if Arne Slot is replaced by a new manager who favours a high-pressing game. He is one of the few guys left in this team who can press and thrive in pressing games.
He is a young player and surely with the ongoing pile up of fixtures that took place he could have got plenty of minutes.
To me,as many have said he seems to play favorites to the extent they are only good for 60 odd minutes and still get trotted out every game and if your face doesn’t fit find another club.
We were better than that.
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What irks me is that the league was won way before it ended, and then our performances started to nosedive, understandably so. That would have been the perfect moment to give the fringe players and the youngsters game time and challenging them to help the team maintain the ongoing performance standards.
Instead of this, he went into auto-pilot, and allowed our season to peter out in a quite mediocre way.
Even worse , he made a point of not playing Elliot, Quansah and other young players, even when the title was won since long. Now, we are paying for his lack of vision and arrogance, because some of these players could have helped us massively this season.
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Nailed it Hope,certainly from that point where is the excuse?
Between Slots ears,you would think.
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Imagine him watching that shower of shit last night and thinking, apparently I’m worse than this 
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Yes, I agree he could have got Elliott more time on the pitch after the league was won.
For example he could have given Elliot a start against Chelsea, brought him on as a sub against Arsenal, given him the whole game against Brighton, and used him from the bench against Palace.
Oh wait. That’s exactly what he did.
Starting him before that is a risk as we were still fighting for a title. A fight Slot won, so I think it’s bit off to criticise him.
It’s worth noting that in those two games Slot started Elliott, we were comfortably beaten, and from memory Elliott was poor in both.
But that’s not the point, is it? He ostracized Elliot and others throughout the season, hardly giving them a minute. And then, yeah, he played them in a couple of games, but without ever giving them the feeling that they were a part of his long term thinking. You couldn’t expect a young player who has been almost completely sidelined for a whole season to suddenly perform at his best, could you?
Compare that to how Klopp treated his youngsters and his fringe players…
And before you say again that Klopp is a unicorn (he is), think of other managers out there. How do Iraola or Xabi for instance treat young promising players? Slot has failed in that regard, damningly so, and Elliot, unfortunately for him, is the showcase for his failings.
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It’s totally the point.
Elliott got chances to impress Slot and did nothing to suggest he should be playing regular first team football. He got 18 appearances and played 821 minutes, and from memory mostly was bang average. You can come up with all kinds of excuses for why Elliott couldn’t perform, but ultimately when he got a chance he didn’t take it.
If Slot had had a mediocre debut season, then I could see how his decision in limiting the minutes of Harvey Elliott could be questioned, but his decisions led to winning the league, and there is no bigger ‘yeah but…’ than that.
But surely he could have played Elliot more. And Quansah too. And maybe found a way to get Nunez more games? And play Diaz on the left where he was happier? He could have found a way to get Chiesa more minutes. Van Dijk, Mac Allister and Salah should have been rested more. And on and on.
How far do you go before you’ve unravelled all the decisions that led to the league title? Titles are precious - in my adult life we’ve won two, I cherish them both for how precious and fragile they are, and I don’t like it when people start retrospectively picking apart all the decision making that led to them being won (which they also did to Klopp’s as well)
And it’s no good pointing out how the manager of Bournemouth handles young players. Let’s see how Iraola handles young players when he is expected to win every game and challenge for the league.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the output of developing a young player at Liverpool is totally different to a club like Bournemouth. Slot has been criticised this year for how he has protected Ngumoha, but his job with him is to prep him to play at the top level for a decade. Clubs like Bournemouth have more freedom to run young players because ultimately all they are doing is showcasing them for a sale. By the time they developing their dodgy Hamstrings they are on someone else’s pitch.
First game after winning the title,Tsimi, Quansah, Jones, Endo, and Elliot all started. It was more typical XI against Arsenal next, but in the following game against Brighton the XI included Tsimi, Quansah, Elliot and Chiesa.
One of the things that has come into focus this season is how much less work the players do during the season under this regime because of the emphasis on recovering from the game stress. That has seemingly had an effect on the fitness of he regulars, but very likely made it much harder for those outside the core group of 14-15 to get the sharpness needed to make a good show of themselves when eventually given their chance to play. And that is certainly going to be a challenge when 4 or 5 go them are thrown in together at the same time.
I think the right lesson here is not about how many opportunities does he give to players outside his small core, but how well he is setting them to succeed when eventually given a chance.
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Or maybe, they just aren’t as good as we think they are?
We’ve had this conversation a number of times. If these fringe players were good enough for Klopp, they ought to have been good enough for Slot.
You have convinced yourself that if Slot had given more minutes to them, we wouldn’t have won the league. That’s an entirely arbitrary conclusion and one that’s beside the point. No one demanded from Slot to play Elliott, Quansah and the rest at the expense of results. What was required from Slot was to make the best of the resources at hand. He didn’t make the grade last year despite the title, and he has most certainly failed at it this year.
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