Mo’s Return, New Core Forming And The Harvey Question

There’s a big question hanging over this Liverpool side in the coming weeks: what does the rotation look like once Mo is back, especially now some of the new signings are starting to feel like part of the core?

You can already see the shape of the next version of this team. The fresh faces aren’t just coming in for the odd game, they’re slowly becoming central to how we play and how Arne Slot wants us to build. That in itself is something to be quietly excited about, even if the exact pecking order is still a bit of a mystery.

Mo’s Return And The New Core

When Mo steps back into the side, the challenge will be balancing his status as the main man with the rhythm the others have started to find. Some lads have taken on more responsibility while he’s been away, and you don’t really want to kill that momentum. At the same time, you’re not leaving Mo out if he’s fit and firing.

That’s where the new signings becoming part of the spine is encouraging. If they keep looking like long-term pillars rather than short-term options, it gives Slot more flexibility. You can rotate without it feeling like a massive drop-off, and you can adjust the game plan without losing the team’s identity. The exact rotation pattern might not be clear yet, but the building blocks are there.

The Harvey Situation At Villa

Then there’s Harvey. The last thing I heard a few weeks back was that Liverpool and Aston Villa are exploring ways to end the loan early. There would be an early termination fee paid by Villa, but the details of that are unclear and might end up being fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, especially if Liverpool can line up another move for him.

There has been interest from at least a couple of German clubs, and you wouldn’t be shocked if others from different leagues had a look as well. He’s clearly a talented lad who just needs the right environment and minutes on the pitch, rather than being stuck in a situation that does nothing for his development.

Have Villa Let Harvey Down?

From the outside looking in, it does feel like Villa have messed Harvey around a bit. That’s not about bitterness, more about how loans can go wrong when everyone is not fully aligned. This is just speculation, but it genuinely wouldn’t surprise me if Unai Emery wasn’t heavily involved in the deal until it was basically done. That kind of thing is more common in football than people think, with deals pushed through at club level and the manager left to make sense of it later.

When that happens, the loanee usually suffers. You end up with a player who never really fits into the manager’s plans, who doesn’t get a proper run of games, and whose season stalls. For someone at Harvey’s stage, that can be really damaging.

If the loan is cut short and Liverpool find him a club that genuinely wants to use him, it might work out better for everyone in the end. He gets football, Liverpool protect an asset, and Villa move on from a deal that never really made sense for them either.

So while there are still unknowns with Mo’s return and Harvey’s future, the bigger picture is not all that gloomy. The new lads are bedding in, the core is evolving, and the squad is slowly taking shape for what comes next.

Written by Ned Flanders: 14 December 2025