Harvey Elliott has had a season to forget with Aston Villa, heading to the Middlesborough club on loan but finding himself almost immediately benched when they decided they were unwilling to trigger a purchase clause that was set to kick in if he made ten appearances.
As a result, he’s spent most of the past year only getting to watch his temporary teammates play professional football while he sits in the stands or occasionally on the bench—though that did get him a good view of the Europa League
final that Villa just won on Wednesday.
Set to return to Liverpool at the end of the season but with just a year on his contract and no signs that head coach Arne Slot sees him as a long-term option, the question now is what comes next for the 23-year-old attacking midfielder. And the answer could be Leeds.
A smattering of reports from the fringes over the past couple of days have floated Leeds as a possible destination, and they also suggest Liverpool have dropped their asking price from £35M—the purchase clause price that Villa agreed to last summer—to around £25M.
For an English player who just last summer was named player of the tournament at the U21 Euros it doesn’t seem unreasonable, but then Elliott has barely played in a year and everyone will likely go in believing he’s on the chopping block and that Liverpool want to sell.
Hopefully, wherever he does end up, Elliott gets more of a chance to play than this season—or the season before, when he found himself well down the pecking order in Arne Slot’s first year in charge after being one of the Jürgen Klopp era’s most promising youngsters.
