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With Liverpool chasing an equalizer and then a winner against Nottingham Forest, attacking midfielder Harvey Elliott was left on the bench by head coach Arne Slot. The same thing happened in the 1-0 defeat at Spurs, while he got just four minutes against Manchester United.
Fit again after a frustrating injury at the start of the season — picked up while Elliott was on England U21 duty — the Liverpool No. 19 has not been playing as much as he would have wanted since making his return. There is still time for that to change, of course, but the only way he can build match sharpness is by playing.
Only Darwin Nunez made more appearances for Liverpool last season than Elliott, who was tied with Cody Gakpo. But those appearances were mainly from the bench, with nine players clocking more minutes on the pitch. This season, Elliott has played just 237 minutes in total, with under an hour of that time coming in the Premier League and the Champions League.
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It is for that reason that links with Borussia Dortmund and Brighton have emerged this month. It is “not easy to come back and be at your best immediately,” Slot said about Elliott when he was asked about him in the context of that speculation.
There is no suggestion that Liverpool would consider selling a talented, valued and homegrown player, nor that the boyhood Reds fan would think about leaving, but Elliott does need to find a way to regular minutes. Fortunately, there are more than enough matches available to think that he will eventually get chances.
In addition to Elliott having needed to recover from a long-term injury, Dominik Szoboszlai is faster, taller and more physically imposing in the No. 10 role, and Curtis Jones is more responsible in possession. But the latter, who was in a similar position of wondering where a run of appearances might come from not so long ago, can provide a good template.
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Elliott played a lot last season, even though he was often deployed — successfully — as a super sub. While he won’t want to pigeonhole himself as that, he would probably take that right now. Jones, only a few months ago, looked like he was some way way from playing every week, but he has been a regular for the majority of this season.
“It’s not that I go back and think ‘OK, what did we all do wrong?’,” Jurgen Klopp said in the final couple of weeks of his Liverpool tenure. “But if I regret one thing a little bit it’s that Harvey didn’t play often enough maybe.
“Because in a very important, intense period — January, a lot of injuries — he played really good. He was probably our best player, right wing, right midfield, all these kinds of things. Everybody came back and he had minutes here, minutes there and he didn’t start anymore, came on, big impact.”
There is a reason that Klopp rated him so highly and there is a reason that Slot hasn’t used him so much so far. If he can get back to being a super-sub before the campaign is out, though, Elliott could — legitimately, given he has played so little — be like a new signing.