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Harvey Elliott’s loan spell at Blackburn Rovers has been one of the few bright spots for Liverpool FC fans this season. Watching “The Child” tear up the Championship certainly has been exciting - despite not starting every game, Elliott somehow leads the league with nine assists, while also creating a whopping 1.8 chances per game. (Only five players create more - including a name familiar to us: Harry Wilson, who’s six years older and has experience playing in both the Premier League and the Championship.) In short, he’s doing very well.
Echo beat writer Ian Doyle was joined by freelance journalist David Lynch on the Echo’s Blood Red podcast, and they both discussed the club’s plans for the wunderkind.
On Harvey’s potential role with the first-team next season, Doyle said:
I fully expect that next season he will be back at Liverpool and challenging for a first-team place.
He will initially be support to Mohamed Salah and I know it is a huge shout at this stage, but I genuinely think he is that talented that he could be the long-term replacement for Salah.
Lynch added some comments that shed light on the decision to send Harvey on loan for this season:
The idea initially was to keep (Harvey Elliott) around this season and give him minutes.
Liverpool thought that Xherdan Shaqiri was going to go, but it didn’t work out that way because of coronavirus.
If Liverpool is intent on integrating Elliott into the first-team as the primary backup to Mohamed Salah, then it would seem that Xherdan Shaqiri’s team at Anfield will be drawing to a close, assuming of course that the club can actually move him on this summer.