The 23-year-old has managed only 85 minutes across three appearances since joining Valencia on a season-long loan from Liverpool, all of them from the bench: 36 minutes against Barcelona, 28 against Sevilla and 21 against Real Sociedad, with no minutes at all in the win at Alavés.
Marca has made his fitness a talking point during the international break, describing a player who "wants to but can't", still short of the physical condition needed to show his quality.
Elliott's struggles trace back to a disrupted build-up to the season. He played only 190 minutes during Andoni Iraola's first pre-season at Liverpool before being allowed to leave, and had managed just 277 minutes on loan at Aston Villa the previous season, leaving him short of games and short of match sharpness heading into a fresh loan spell in Spain.
Given he was not part of Iraola's plans, that patchy preparation is, in a sense, understandable, and Valencia are now paying the price for it as much as the player is.
The international break has effectively become a second pre-season for Elliott, with three weeks free of matches offering the ideal window to get his conditioning up to Valencia's standards before club football resumes. It represents a stern test for a player once seen as one of English football's brightest young talents, and the challenge now is to recover the sharpness that once made him look destined for the top before two difficult years derailed his progress.
Valencia and LaLiga were meant to offer him a change of scenery to reset; instead, his lack of fitness has so far prevented him from making any real impression.
Valencia's financial commitment to the deal only sharpens the scrutiny. The loan, agreed for one season with no option to make it permanent, sees the club cover almost the entirety of Elliott's Premier League-level salary, making him the third-highest earner in the squad despite the reduced terms.
That price tag means expectations remain high regardless of the circumstances behind his slow start, and Elliott now has these three weeks to find his ideal condition and begin justifying it.