Harvey Elliott is planning talks with new Liverpool boss Andoni Iraola to see whether his stay at the club can be prolonged.
The 23-year-old had said his goodbyes to the Reds last summer after being sold on loan with an obligation to buy to Aston Villa.
But after his move to Villa turned sour, Elliott will now return to Liverpool. Under Arne Slot, he would surely have been sold this summer regardless, but as journalist David Lynch explains, the No. 19 is hoping to come back in for pre-season and take it from there.
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Elliott focused on Liverpool pre-season
Elliott is arguably the Liverpool player who can benefit the most from Slot being sacked. There is no guarantee Iraola will view him differently, but the door to a return is at least partially open.
There had been suggestions that Liverpool could look to use Elliott as a makeweight in the Yan Diomande deal, but, speaking to Anfield Index, Lynch says that the former Fulham youngster wants to come in for pre-season and speak with Iraola before deciding what to do.
With Diomande wanting his own future sorted much more quickly, Elliott is unlikely to go the other way.
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“Harvey Elliott’s focus is to come back to pre-season, try and impress, try and stick around if he can,” Lynch said. “But it can probably be pretty helpful that Leipzig have had interest in the past, there might still not be a spot for him at Liverpool in this manager’s plans, he has gone out before with the intention of making a permanent move. So, maybe that would be helpful.
Albeit I would say to counter that, Harvey Elliott is expected to be back for pre-season, not to sort out his future at this point. I think he wants talks with the manager, I think he wants to have a crack at it before he does anything, whereas Diomande is quite keen as I understand it to sort things out before the World Cup. So, maybe that makes it difficult to do the two deals simultaneously.”
Will Elliott stay at Liverpool?
The one wrinkle in Elliott’s plan to stay and ‘have another crack’ at being a Liverpool player is his contract situation.
With only one year remaining on his deal, it really is make or break time this summer.
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Obviously, Liverpool had planned for him to be an Aston Villa player by now, and so would not have had contract talks in their thinking at all.
Though they’ll now have to pivot, it feels much more likely that they’ll look for a buyer for Elliott rather than extend his agreement.
Liverpool have shown that they are willing to let players go into the final years of their contracts before making a decision as the deal runs down. But after losing Trent Alexander-Arnold and Ibrahima Konate in those circumstances, there should be no appetite to do that again.
As a result, though it would be nice to see Elliott turn things around from here, it still feels more probable that he will be playing for a new club by August.
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