With Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis doing Marinakis Things™ and the reported transfer of Morgan Gibbs-White slowing down, reports are emerging that Tottenham Hotspur are starting to look at other options. This morning, French journalist Sebastien Vidal tweeted that Tottenham are set to hold talks with Liverpool for a transfer of 22-year-old attacking midfielder Harvey Elliott.
My immediate reaction to this? Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Elliott has put up some impressive numbers for Liverpool this past season despite being essentially an impact player off the bench and a rotation option. That’s not a pejorative — Liverpool really were that good last season, and Elliott needs to go to a place where he can get more minutes. Elliott profiles as an attacking midfielder — he’s creative, he can pass, he can score. He’s mostly been deployed as a right winger or right-sided inside forward, but can play centrally as well. He’s coming off a five-goal performance at the U21 Euros, which England won for the second straight time. And look, if Brighton are interested in the guy, then it probably behooves us to scoop him up before they can get their mitts on him and double his transfer fee.
The knock on Elliott is that he’s only 5’7”. But despite being a smol bean, he’s the kind of midfielder Spurs were lacking last season and I think he’s not only got the skills to improve Tottenham now, his ceiling is even higher. I know a lot of fans are hung up on Gibbs-White right now. I think Harvey Elliott has the potential to be even better.
I have no idea what the status of the Gibbs-White transfer is, whether it’s going to go through or collapse in the face of Marinakis and Nottingham Forest’s obstinacy. But it’s probably a good idea for Spurs to be looking at other options. This is the first report about Elliott I’ve seen, and to be fair it’s a bit curious why a French reporter would have the goods here, so skepticism is probably warranted. That said, honestly, despite his diminutive stature, I’m kind of wondering why Tottenham didn’t just go after Elliott first.
I would be very, very okay with this, depending on the price.