Harvey Elliott “really loves Liverpool” and boasts the “elite mentality” required to become a senior star for the Premier League champions, claims his former Fulham youth team coach Jack Johnson.
At 17 years of age, the highly-rated midfielder is already part of Jurgen Klopp’s first team squad.
On the back of being lured away from Craven Cottage in the summer of 2019, Elliott has gone on to take in eight appearances for Liverpool.
Youngsters are being given a chance to make their mark within star-studded ranks at Anfield, with academy graduates and encouraging signings seeing a prominent platform handed to them.
Johnson expects Elliott to make the most of his opportunities, with the boyhood Liverpool fan living the dream on Merseyside as he looks turn undoubted potential into a lengthy career at the very top of the game.
“Harvey’s a Liverpool fan and he really loves Liverpool,” Johnson told the Blood Red Podcast of a player he worked with from U12 level at Fulham.
“And nothing ever seemed to faze Harvey. He just wants to play football. It doesn’t matter if it's in the back garden or in front of 100,000 – I don’t think his heartbeat would change. He takes everything in his stride. He just wants to play football – and wants to win.
“His mentality is elite. That’s why he is where he’s at. Working at an academy, you see a lot of very good players, who have got tricks and have got skills, but you could tell from quite early on that he had that elite mentality.
“As I said earlier, some people may think he’s quiet, but it comes from a place of being really focused. We’d have analysis sessions and he’d be really clever. He’d sit where he’d get the most out of that analysis session. You may have one or two boys in the group who, if you sit next to them, they might distract you. But he made sure he sat away from that.
“He’d have the banter and the jokes at the right time, but when there was information to be given, he’d be at the front, taking it all on board. So, yes, elite mentality from the kid.”
Johnson added on his experiences with Elliott: “My first impressions? Good player! Good feet, skilful, knew the game, and like a lot of players who are highly thought of, would play up a year. He was a good character. He was quite a quiet lad – not in a shy way, in a real focused way.
“He knows what he’s at the club for; he knows what he’s come to training to do – and that’s improve and be the best he can be, every single training session and every single game. So, quiet, but that was down to being really, really focused.
“At U12s, technically he was probably the best in the group, but I think the turning point was when he developed physically – and he took real ownership of that himself. He went away and worked really hard on his sprinting, and when I came back across him with the U15s, two or three years later, he was a different beast.”