Last season when he was stuck at Aston Villa, Harvey Elliott was desperate to play. Instead, a loan-to-buy deal with a £35M purchase obligation tied to ten appearances meant that when Villa decided they didn’t want to pay it, Elliott’s chances at playing disappeared completely.
Neither Villa nor Liverpool were able to hammer out a compromise, and Elliott lost a key year in his development as a result.
Now, he’s at Valencia. And he’s not playing as much as anyone would have hoped. This time, though, his loan club are desperate to play him, having committed to paying their third-highest wages to take him for the season. Yet he only has 133 minutes to his credit after being available in six league matches.
That means of the 540 available minutes, he’s played around 25% of the time. There have been past rumblings that overall fitness is the primary issue, and this week there are reports out of Spain suggesting Liverpool have sent representatives to Spain to talk with Elliott and Valencia.
The goal of those talks isn’t to cut short the loan—it’s to try to figure out a pathway to success for Elliott that would allow him to make a difference for Valencia in the current season.
While it’s understandable that a year on the fringes at Liverpool in Arne Slot’s first season in charge followed by his Villa experience would have likely damaged Elliott’s confidence, we’re now a full two months into the season and he had a full pre-season with the Reds.
If he is going to turn it around—not just this season and for Valencia, but in his career more generally—the time to show he can do that is now, at a club that very much wants to play him. If he’s not match fit now, though, two months into the season and following a full pre-season with the Reds, it’s concerning.
Hopefully, for his own sake more than anything, there’s a pathway that Elliott him from where he is now, playing around 25% of the minutes for a La Liga club in the relegation places, to being a regular contributor with a bright future no matter if that lies in Spain, England, or elsewhere.