It was the transfer saga of the summer and one that continues to burn for all involved deep into winter. For buyers, sellers and the player who torched relationships to make it happen, Alexander Isak’s £125million British record move from Newcastle to Liverpool feels desperately ill-fated.
Save for Isak’s agent, there have been no winners. Not Arne Slot. Not Eddie Howe. Not Liverpool’s transfer chiefs nor Newcastle’s owners. And certainly not Isak, who will watch Saturday’s game between the two clubs with a fractured bone in his leg.
It is, though, his spirit and belief that has looked most broken of all. Sources compare his demeanour to Fernando Torres leaving Liverpool for Chelsea and a visible shift in body language – from lightness and likability to something sullen, lost and withdrawn.
The toxic manner of his Newcastle extraction was surely not good for the soul, going on strike and turning his back on the staff, team-mates and supporters who had cared for him most.
His unveiling videos at Liverpool, filmed late on the evening of deadline day, were devoid of the personality he does possess. This was meant to be freedom and yet he still wore the look of a hostage.
Maybe it is that part of him is trapped in the trauma of those summer months. In August, the sight of him driving into Newcastle’s training ground while an ice-cream van drove out captured his alienation in what had been his home – a family fun day for players and staff had just ended, and Isak had been told to stay away.
Alexander Isak has barely had an impact since his British record £125million move to Liverpool, and is said to be struggling to adapt to life at Anfield
Sources compare Isak’s demeanour to Fernando Torres when he left Liverpool for Chelsea and describe a visible shift in body language – from lightness and likability to something sullen, lost and withdrawn
Isak’s nightmare start to life at Liverpool was made even worse when he broke his leg against Tottenham back in December
Has he found a new home on Merseyside? Not yet. It felt revealing when, last month, team-mate Alexis Mac Allister said: ‘Alex is very quiet. He likes to be on his own sometimes.’
That was when Isak was fit. He broke his leg when scoring just his second Premier League goal of the season at Tottenham on December 20 and, until recently, he was reliant on a wheeled crutch.
Never did the 26-year-old imagine he would spend the weeks prior to what should have been his first meeting against his former club walking with the aid of a zimmer frame. In fact, none of this is how anyone imagined.
For Slot, he was signing an elite goalscorer who would as good as guarantee his team defending their Premier League title. The reality is that he arrived half-fit because of his self-imposed exile and, even when Slot has spoken with great enthusiasm of the Swede finally being ready to impact, he simply has not.
Liverpool began the Premier League season with five straight wins, and then Isak made his full league debut in a 2-1 defeat at Crystal Palace and they have won just five of 17 since. Slot admits he felt compelled to play Isak to build fitness, at the expense of Hugo Ekitike, who lost his early-season momentum as a result.
There were murmurings, too, of Mohamed Salah feeling eclipsed by the spotlight on the marquee signing. Isak’s three goals in all competitions have come without Salah on the pitch. Of Salah’s six, just one was alongside Isak.
Isak celebrates his first goal for Liverpool – against Southampton in the Carabao Cup back in September. He has added only two more to his tally since
Never did the 26-year-old imagine he would spend the weeks prior to what should have been his first meeting against his former club walking with the aid of a zimmer frame. In fact, none of this is how anyone imagined
There has been no chemistry between a pair who scored 52 top-flight goals last season. Their form – or rather, the complete absence of it – is the central reason Slot’s job is on the line. Goals change games, perception and league position.
Then there is Richard Hughes, the Liverpool sporting director whose friendship with Howe was parked amid the transfer standoff. Sources suspected Isak, who downed tools in July, had prior encouragement from Anfield that his asking price would be met.
While Hughes got his man – and very few argued it was not a fantastic signing – the Isak obsession cost the Reds time in the doomed pursuit of Marc Guehi, a defender whose presence would have contributed to more points this season than the seldom-seen striker.
And what about Howe? He knew all summer he was likely to lose his star player and, with only a week of the window remaining, that was all but confirmed when the club’s owners failed to persuade him to stay during a secret visit to his Northumberland home.
All but £1m of the Isak fee was then spent, in effect, on Nick Woltemade (£69m) and Yoane Wissa (£55m). They overpaid for both and, in the case of Woltemade, it was an opportunity presented to them at a time when doors were slamming shut, not opening. He had not been on the shortlist.
The German’s scoring introduction, five from six starts, masked what were – and are – compatibility issues. He lacks Isak’s pace and likes to play with his back to goal, operating more as a ‘9.5’. Howe’s team had been built around a lithe No9 who terrified opponents by living on their shoulder.
Woltemade is a good player, but he looks like the missing piece in somebody else’s jigsaw. That has been hard on him and the team of late. Wissa, like Isak, has spent much of the season injured and has scored just three times. The transition is why Newcastle are ninth in the table. Howe is diplomatic, but does not hide the impact of the loss.
Isak has utterly failed to develop any chemistry with Mohamed Salah (right). Only one of his three goals was scored with Salah also on the pitch
Newcastle have struggled to adjust to life without Isak – as their manager Eddie Howe admitted this week
‘You lose a player like Alex… and let’s put this right, Liverpool paid the money they did because he’s an outstanding footballer, an unbelievable talent,’ said Howe on Friday. ‘We were privileged to have him for the years we did. When you take that player away from your team, it’s going to change the dynamics.
‘Then you have to try to find a player or players who can still make the team really effective. We’re still in that moment and we’ve been trying to do that all season. We’re still finding ways to get the best out of the new players we’ve signed without training, with very minimal time to do any work with them.
‘They’ve done really well and they’re trying to give the team the best they have, and we are trying to adapt. It’s an ever-challenging thing.’
So, for now, world football’s most talked-about transfer has not felt like a new beginning at all. Rather, it has marked the end of an era at Newcastle, of balance at Liverpool, and of something inside Isak that made him so precious in the first place. It was the richest deal in British history, and yet everyone feels poorer for it.
