Harvey Elliott (signed on loan)

[andyh]

Fully expecting the ‘My Villa Nightmare’ story in the press once he goes home.

[PaulWinch again]

I wouldn’t blame him.

[Duncan Shaw]

I still am more inclined to believe the story that the issue is triggering the obligation in this set of SCR numbers. I guess we'll know come the 2nd half of December. The alternative is that Unai didn't want him in the first place (which I don't buy) or he's turned out to be more useless than Unai thought (which would surprise me).

Agree with this. I think we'll start seeing more of him in December

I think this too, and I think Monchi got a bollocking for not realising.

[chrisw1]

I think the Buendia Renaissance was unexpected.  That, together with Emery clearly not being convinced, means it would be madness to let the £35m deal kick in.

It's awful for the player but it would make sense for Villa to negotiate with Liverpool to send him back at Christmas with us making some sort of payment to cover part of the costs.

[London Villan]

Even more so with Oli’s and Guessand’s form.

[Dave]

If we do want to use him but can't because of this "play ten games as get screwed for UEFA FSR" rumour, I don't really see why Elliott agreed to this.

22 years old, keen to leave one of the biggest clubs in the world just to get more time on the pitch, plenty of decent clubs keen to sign him. Was our pitch to him that he should join us to barely be used at all for the first half of the season just to help our books work out?

If this whole structure is simply for the benefit of our accountancy periods, why didn't everyone agree to a half season loan and we can look at signing him in January and use him as we want for the first half of the season?

The only argument that I can think of is because Liverpool might want more of a guarantee of a pre-agreed sale - but what they now have is an asset who is losing value by sitting on our bench, still with no guarantee that we buy him.

[LeeB]

If we do want to use him but can't because of this "play ten games as get screwed for UEFA FSR" rumour, I don't really see why Elliott agreed to this.

22 years old, keen to leave one of the biggest clubs in the world just to get more time on the pitch, plenty of decent clubs keen to sign him. Was our pitch to him that he should join us to barely be used at all for the first half of the season just to help our books work out?

If this whole structure is simply for the benefit of our accountancy periods, why didn't everyone agree to a half season loan and we can look at signing him in January and use him as we want for the first half of the season?

The only argument that I can think of is because Liverpool might want more of a guarantee of a pre-agreed sale - but what they now have is an asset who is losing value by sitting on our bench, still with no guarantee that we buy him.

This is the only upside of the deal so far.

[Somniloquism]

I honestly think that the UEFA rule of effectively having the value hit the books when it is first triggered was either forgotten about, or was deemed not an issue with us thinking we would get a fee from Martinez to Manure to cover it. As soon as we didn't give ourselves the wriggle room we were then stuck with having to wait out Elliotts 10 games until we can do some business in Jan to cover it.