Harvey Elliott (signed on loan)

[brontebilly]

If we end up paying £35m for him then it's another huge transfer market mistake.

What's qualifying for the CL worth? Elliot is a bit samey to our other options unfortunately. They all want to come in field

[aj2k77]

He isn't going to be the difference between qualifying or not. There's nothing Emery has saw in him in 5 months leading up to now to pick him.

[eamonn]

With the 10 game clause - 5 of them have to be in the second half of the season, and we're assuming it's all comps.

He played Thursday and today, so we've got two more left. With Onana and Barkley likely back next week, it seems that another 3 months with no games or even getting on the bench is on the cards unless a new agreement is reached with Liverpool tomorrow.

[Dave]

With the 10 game clause - 5 of them have to be in the second half of the season, and we're assuming it's all comps.

If this now apparently true thing is true, can you give me plausible answers to these three questions:

(1) why, with all the news about ten game periods, all of the well-connected journalists Who Know Things knew the ten game thing and have reported it didn't know about this weird "but five of them have to be in the second half of the season"  subclause? They apparently knew the rest of it last September, why not this bit?

(2) why, why the fuck is that a clause? Who is it to protect or help? In the room where the various representatives of Villa, Liverpool and Elliott are meeting, who is banging their hand on the table and chucking in "BUT! Five games need to be after *checks notes* sometime at the end of January. There's definitely a reason this is important".

(3) most obviously, if this is true it then we could have used him as much as wanted. There's now a weird clause that means we don't have to sign him unless five of the games are later than some random point in January. So...he doesn't now need to be sitting at home for the last four months and we can just use him like anyone else?