Last summer, Liverpool agreed a season-long loan for Harvey Elliott to Aston Villa including a £35M purchase clause that would be triggered if the 22-year-old attacking midfielder made ten appearances for the Birmingham club. The deal, it became clear quickly, was a poor one for all involved.
Villa and manager Unai Emery quickly decided that £35M was too steep a price to pay for the England youth international and promptly sent Elliott to the reserves. He recently made a 13 minute cameo appearance
against Brentford and played the full 90 against Salzburg in the Europa League due to an injury crisis.
Those two games bring him up to seven Villa appearances, meaning he will likely be limited to two further outings the rest of the season. It’s a situation that led to talk of a Liverpool return in January—or perhaps of an alternation to the agreement between clubs to alter the purchase obligation clause.
With the transfer window just hours from slamming shut, though, reports from the Aston Villa side of things suggest neither is going to happen. Elliott will remain at Villa for the rest of the season and the ten-match clause will not be altered. Villa are said not to have changed their opinion on the player’s value.
Hopefully, a season spent mostly watching from the sidelines won’t set Elliott back too much—or scare away potential summer suitors. Regardless, it’s hard to imagine the player fetching £35M at the end of the current season, and the deal will go down as a cautionary tale for purchase clauses.
