As the new season has gotten underway, there have been lots of positives for Jürgen Klopp to take. His Liverpool 2.0 is coming along nicely and the Premier League table looks as well as could be reasonably expected at this stage.
Liverpool ends the weekend third, behind Arsenal and Manchester City by a point. It will constantly be returned to that had the VAR calamity not cost the Reds at Spurs, the situation could have been better — but it has certainly not been bad.
One element of the success that Liverpool has had that has been overlooked is perhaps the in-game alterations that Klopp has been able to make. The German is having a very good season in that regard and has continually got them spot on.
It helps, of course, that Klopp and his staff have often had very good options to use. In attack, for example, they have often had two of Luis Díaz, Darwin Núñez, Cody Gakpo and Diogo Jota to introduce, and that certainly helps.
But ‘impact substitute’ is a role that Harvey Elliott appears to have perfected. Only once has Elliott started in the league — away at Brighton — and that was not his best game. He was taken off at half-time when the Reds looked to change things up.
But when Elliott has come off the bench, he has been able to make a real impact and did so again in the Merseyside derby. He seems to have a perfect reading of the game so that when he comes into it, he is instantly able to get up to speed.
Of course, it is a tricky balancing act. For someone so good in that role, he will expect to be afforded chances to begin matches. Few could argue that his start against Brighton, for instance, was not warranted. It clearly was.
But the evidence so far in this campaign would point to Elliott being most useful for Liverpool when he can play in the Carabao Cup and Europa League and be a player used to change games in the second half — either in the sense of adding extra attacking impetus or simply helping to hold onto a lead.
The instant reaction to that would be that Elliott might not like that role. He might prefer to think that he has a realistic chance of forcing his way into the team ahead of Dominik Szoboszlai, the number one option as a right-sided number eight.
More likely, Elliott’s role will remain as it is, with Szoboszlai playing very well and with a very good injury history. But that does not have to be a bad thing for Elliott, who is proving to be a really useful new weapon.
After all, coming on in the 80th minute these days is no longer a 10-minute cameo thanks to the rule change around added time. Elliott was introduced in minute 62 against Everton. Mohamed Salah sealed the game in minute 97 and Elliott played 38 minutes in all.
For now at least, that is the role that he is proving most effective in. And given that the matches are longer now than ever before, being the most impactful of second-half substitutes is not a role that Elliott should be too displeased with. He certainly seems to be making the most of it when he performs it.
