Arne Slot has closed the door on the notion that Harvey Elliott will be recalled to Liverpool to cover for Alexander Isak after the striker suffered a broken leg. Isak’s injury is expected to keep the record signing out for at least two months, trimming the options available to the manager.<\/p>\n
Liverpool spent \u00a3415 million ($560.6 million) to bring Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 and Isak into the frontline, yet a striking slot remained unfilled. The idea of bringing Elliott back from his loan at Aston Villa has been proposed by some as a low-cost solution, but Slot made clear that is not the club’s immediate focus.<\/p>\n
Elliott has had a difficult four months at Villa. Signed on loan with an obligation to buy worth \u00a335 million if he makes 10 Premier League appearances, he has made only three, the last of which came in September. Villa boss Unai Emery acknowledged the awkward situation and said: “He is on loan playing with us, but he is not definitely adding to us with a permanent contract.” Emery added: “Hopefully we can get the best for him and the best for us. I respect him as a player and as a person. He is training well, but we have one circumstance with him. Hopefully we can get a solution for him to try to play consistently and try to continue in his career with us or not.”<\/p>\n
Liverpool included sell-on and buy-back clauses in Elliott’s exit, but there is not thought to be any option to unilaterally trigger a recall. Slot was categorical about the midfielder’s status this week. “Harvey is an Aston Villa player,” he said. “He is supposed to be going there for a season. Any questions about him, the best place to ask is at Villa.”<\/p>\n
Slot has pushed attention back to immediate fixtures. “My first and only thoughts are on the upcoming two games,” he insisted, ahead of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leeds United. “Two difficult ones and two home games, which is really nice. It\u2019s time for the players who are available to do what they\u2019ve done many times, which is roll their sleeves up and fans as well to help us on the best possible way to get the results we want.”<\/p>\n
Cody Gakpo is expected to return this weekend after missing three matches with a muscular injury. Slot pointed to Federico Chiesa and Florian Wirtz as left-side options, while Dominik Szobozlai’s suspension and Mohamed Salah’s AFCON duty create a right-wing gap. Teenage forward Rio Ngumoha, who began the campaign with a stoppage-time winner against Newcastle United and started both Carabao Cup ties, has yet to start a Premier League match or make a cameo since November. On the youngster Slot said: “For his age, I think he has the most minutes of all 17 year olds in the Premier League,” and added: “That tells you how much playing time he gets and how special that is for a 17-year-old. It also tells you about his quality because it\u2019s not completely normal for a 17-year-old to have as much playing time as he has.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot rules out Elliott recall as Liverpool manage Isak setback and reshuffle ahead of Wolves in Jan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,175,1163],"tags":[195,299,872],"class_list":["post-5323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-liverpool","category-transfers","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot","tag-cody-gakpo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}