Harvey Elliott will undoubtedly look back on this season with fondness when his career eventually ends. Despite suffering a horrendous double fracture to his ankle early on in the season against Leeds that kept him out for the better part of five months, the teenager has still enjoyed a productive campaign.
This has been the season that he made his breakthrough into Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool first team, and scored his first goal for the club in the 3-1 win against Cardiff in the FA Cup.
But his career is only getting started, and while he looks up to several players in the Liverpool squad, he eventually wants to be that player that the next generation look up to.
Speaking to Liverpool’s official website, Elliott has spoken about his future goals.
“Now I’m in and around the team, I sort of want to be that figure that people look up to,” said the 18-year-old.
“Obviously, I look at players and take bits from their game into my game.
“But now that I’m in and around the team, I want to be my own person. I want to play my own game. I don’t want to base it off anyone else.”
At the beginning of the season, Klopp was beginning to use Elliott in a mouth-watering combination with Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold down the right-hand side, the three linking up superbly before Elliott’s horrible injury curtailed his season.
Asked about playing with Salah, Elliott replied: “Who wouldn’t love playing with Mo Salah?”
“In my opinion, he’s the best in the world. Alongside Trent [Alexander-Arnold] on that right side, it’s a dream for any youngster.”
Elliott’s comeback from injury has been taken with caution. He’s played only one league game since his return, against Leicester in early February, and has mostly been used in cup competitions. And so we haven’t seen the Salah-Alexander-Arnold-Elliott trifecta that much since his injury in September.
Yet the rest of this season will be about Elliott slowly rebuilding his confidence back to where it was pre-injury. Klopp won’t rush his comeback and time is very much on Elliott’s side. But the hope is that we could see Elliott feature more regularly and combine with Salah and Alexander-Arnold before the end of what could be an historic season for Klopp and the Reds, with three competitions still to win.
With doubts continuing to rise about Salah’s future at the club, we may not see that trio link up for much longer. But should Salah decide to stay at Liverpool and renew his contract, with Alexander-Arnold only 23 and Elliott still in his teens, Klopp’s right-hand side could be fixed for the next half-decade, and even longer.
And by the time Salah does walk away from Liverpool, Elliott will have sat under his learning tree for years, and that’s not a bad place to be.
