‘Not an excuse’ – Liverpool point finger at Newcastle United for Alexander Isak struggles
Alexander Isak left Newcastle United for Liverpool in a British record transfer in the summer.
Newcastle United were involved in the transfer saga to end all sagas in the summer – and it’s fair to say it was one they had no want to be involved in.
The minute Alexander Isak went on strike in July and refused to train with his teammates, the writing was on the wall for his Magpies’ future, but the club, in many ways, refused to see it.
Liverpool remained persistent, having unsettled the frontman, and when they tabled a Premier League record deal on the Sunday before the close of the summer transfer window, Newcastle eventually buckled. It was a sorry end to a sordid saga, one which Newcastle are without doubt keen to forget.
Isak has since gone to Liverpool and found goals hard to come by, leaving many to question the £125m transfer.
The sulky Swede’s replacement – Nick Woltemade – has, for reference, netted three in four starts.
Isak has since gone to Liverpool and found goals hard to come by, leaving many to question the £125m transfer. The sulky Swede’s replacement – Nick Woltemade – has, for reference, netted three in four starts.
Newcastle to blame for Alexander Isak struggles at Liverpool?
And while Newcastle can definitely be blamed for not acting quicker and more decisively with Isak, and other deals, this summer, it’s hard to point the finger at them in any other way. However, that has not stopped Arne Slot namechecking them when it comes to explaining why Isak has not hit the ground running.
During his press conference prior to the weekend fixtures, Slot said of Isak: “I said to him when he started that the difficult thing will be you will have your appearances, like you just said, but if you add the minutes together, [he] probably only had two or three 90-minute games.
“That is what we inherited from the situation of him not being with the team in Newcastle and we knew this before, so it’s not an excuse.
“He already scored a goal, he gets fitter and fitter, but the main thing is he adjusts to his teammates and the teammates adjust to him. The more he plays together, the better things will work. He had a great counter movement in the Palace game, where in the end the midfielder didn’t see that and he already played the ball to the right. If he would have seen it, he would have been one-on-one to the goalkeeper. So, these are things you get if you play more together.
“Playing more together has been a bit harder than last season because of Alexander Isak, because of [Alexis] Mac Allister, because of Conor Bradley, that Dominik Szoboszlai has played on eight, on 10, on right full-back for the reasons I just said.
But we are, in my opinion, too focused on this season, but the last part of last season had a lot of similarities with the start of this season – with one exception that [in] the second part of last season we scored seven set-pieces, which led to a lot of wins, and this season we’ve conceded four, I think.”
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