Our right hand side is dogshit. If we can get Harvey back in January we should do, what’s there to lose?
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Yes I felt his move to Villa was an error. A poor move for him it happens but one must ask who advised him and who oversaw the deal?
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Absolutely. Nothing to lose, and potentially much to gain, even more so if Salah leaves the club after the AFCON. There will be a lot of games to be played, bring the lad back.
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You can’t draw conclusions about Elliott’s ability by looking at what has happened at Villa. Emery is using him to score points with his directors. And even if Elliott has floundered, it’s no surprise after Slot parked him for an entire season.
Slot has effectively ruined Elliott’s career. He may not have been a world beater, but he was a young contributor with a higher ceiling than this. He’s gone from someone Klopp relied upon, to someone who hasn’t played PL football for more than 12 months for no reason at all.
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If there is one thing I don’t trust Slot about at all, given on past evidence, it’s nurturing young players and helping them to develop to the best they can become.
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Liverpool do not have the option to recall Harvey Elliott, but he will be returning to Anfield as it stands.
Loan rules prohibit Elliott from playing for more than two sides (LFC + AVFC) in the same season.
[@LewisSteele_]
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Looks like Villa really did a fucking number on Harvey and us.
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Yes and no, I thought he should have used Harvey more last season and thought in hindsight he treated Quansah badly.
However, are either of those good enough to ne starters in our best 11 if all players are playing to the best of their ability?
Yeah, the answer should be that they never get one of our young players on loan again.
Regardless, this is another case which doesn’t shed a particularly favourable light on Edwards and Hughes. This loan rule though is absolutely stupid, it has to be said.
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They are both young, so probably not yet. But they are both good enough to provide good squad depth, and in this rotten season, they’d have seen a lot of playing time if Slot could have summoned a bit more trust towards them than he did last season.
Well, at least Quansah plays. But Elliot has obviously fallen victim to some shady power games at Aston Villa. They should be ashamed of themselves. You don’t treat a promising young player like that.
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And questions have to be asked of Hughes negotiating a loan deal. We’ve been burnt by the Italian clubs before on this but obviously he thought it couldn’t happen…
Villa changed sporting directors shortly after the loan deal and the new one would rather have the potential Elliott transfer money to spend on a target of his own. Shitty for Elliott, but not something Hughes could’ve known was gonna happen at Villa
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Its exposing the club like that to that risk. A loan should have been rejected outright.
It was a loan with what was roundly assumed to be cast iron guarantee of a permanent deal. No one could have reasonably expected Emery to go to the lengths hes going to for it to not be triggered, especially given the previous tightness of Emery and Monchi.
Ultimately we had a young player the manager just was not going to use and we had to find an exit for him. If there is criticism of Hughes it is seemingly tying this so tightly to the Isak deal and allowing that to drag on so long, leaving Elliott with reduced options to choose from that late in the window
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Its not a loan rule per se, but one about registering players. It’s not that unreasonable to limit the number of clubs you can represent in a season and the bigger question I think is on Slot for turning to Elliott against Newcastle when we knew he was three quarters of the way out of the door already
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If we are going to really knuckle down on the idea of Wirtz as a creative 10, we really could do a lot worse that have Harvey backing him up.
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There’s definitely some cruel irony in him leaving because there wasn’t a clear role for him in the side, only for Slot to come up with a different system where he’d likely be able to get some minutes. Not that I expect that system to endure but still…
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Actually I think that is exactly a scenario that an experienced negotiator should have considered just as, for example, a solicitor is expected to ensure a conveyance accounts for foreseeable events. The only benefit for us from the loan was that Harvey would be ineligible to play against us, something that we should not have been willing to risk forgoing 35m for. Harvey should have been told it’s a permanent transfer or nothing (protecting him as well as us). None of this is only clear in hindsight, loan shenanigans have been part of the game for eons.
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Why would we tell that Harvey when it was not him who made it a loan? Villa structured the deal that way because of accounting fuckery.
And I’m all about effective risk mitigations (@jabu would love my templates), but accounting for a famously effective relationship between Emery and Monchi to blow up the way it did, with Emery using Harvey to get Monchi fired and then stand on business even after that…that just isnt something you can account for.
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We didn’t have to allow the loan. End of. It was totally foreseeable, through injury, falling out of favour, for financial or myriad other reasons, that the transfer could fall over. It’s a poor decision to allow Villa that optionality (without even a meaty loan fee) and casts doubt on Hughes deal making.
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