Browsing: Isak

Liverpool striker Alexander Isak was the story of the summer as he managed to force through a move from Newcastle United on deadline day.

With the move involving the Swede effectively going on strike ahead of the new campaign before getting his Anfield switch, he understandably has few fans left in the north east.

Those aggrieved Magpies may, therefore, take an element of pleasure in Isak’s most recent setback.

Isak is joined by Arsenal striker Viktor Gyokeres in a star-studded Sweden attack, but that was not enough to overcome the tiny state of Kosovo, ranked 91st in the world by FIFA, in their most recent World Cup qualifier.

As quoted by Fotbollskanalen, Isak said: “It’s awful. Embarrassing. Disappointing, yet again. Everything is too bad. We’re playing too badly. The way we’re playing doesn’t work.

“We’re doing it too badly individually too. It’s a combination of everything. It’s sad that we’re in this situation. It’s a bit of a crisis situation. That’s clear.”

The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.

The 1-0 loss leaves them at the bottom of Group B with just a single point to their name. Switzerland and Kosovo has raced into the lead with 10 and seven points respectively, leaving Sweden’s World Cup hopes in the balance.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do. But it’s all too bad,” Isak admitted. “There has been a negative development since the World Cup qualifiers started, there hasn’t been any progress. It’s bitter.”

Sweden should certainly be doing better, in FourFourTwo’s opinion, that much is clear.

Isak still awaits his first Premier League goal with Liverpool; the Reds will hope his difficult experience with Sweden has fired him up (Image credit: Getty Images)

With Isak and Gyokeres at your disposal, along with the likes of Tottenham Hotspur’s Lucas Bergvall, Aston Villa’s Victor Lindelof, and well-respected Stoke City goalkeeper Viktor Johansson, there should be enough quality to beat the likes of Kosovo.

Isak is valued at €120m, according to Transfermarkt.Liverpool next face Manchester United when Premier League action returns this weekend.

Source link

Arne Slot insisted that Mohamed Salah and Alexander Isak would develop an understanding in attack, speaking after Liverpoolâ€s stoppage-time defeat by Chelsea meant they relinquished top spot to Arsenal.

Salah and Isak were disappointing as the champions fell to their third successive defeat in all competitions but Slot is confident that his big-name forwards will improve once they get to know each other.

“The more they play together the more they will connect,†the Liverpool manager said. “You have to work really hard to reach a certain level and then itâ€s very hard in football because you also play against very good teams to keep that level going. What I mean by that is consistency. But itâ€s clear that we had our changes in the summer. Players came in different moments.

“Last week thereâ€s hardly been any training time. Still we need to try to bring these players in. If the result would have been better today with a draw or a win then we would have had a great start to the season if you take into account everything that happened in the summer in Liverpool.â€

Slot, who had to rejig his defence after Ibrahima Konaté went off with a thigh injury in the second half, defended Salahâ€s wayward finishing. “What I like is that we brought him many times in the position he would like to be in,†the Dutchman said. “And I would like him to be in because heâ€s shown in his career and since Iâ€m here that in those positions he can score goals.

“He had many opportunities to do what heâ€s done so often. Heâ€s a human being and itâ€s not like every chance he gets is always a goal. We feel sometimes it is because of what heâ€s done last season.â€

Liverpool host Manchester United after the international break and Slot believes better finishing would have stopped his side from losing at Chelsea and Crystal Palace. “In both games weâ€ve created more chances than the team we have faced but the truth is that we have only scored once in both games and our opponent has scored twice,†he said.

Chelsea led through Moisés Caicedoâ€s early goal and it seemed they would have to settle for a point when Cody Gakpo equalised. But Enzo Marescaâ€s side moved up to sixth when Estêvão Willian, the Brazilian teenager, popped up in the 95th minute to score his first goal in English football.

skip past newsletter promotion

Sign up to Football Daily

Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football

Privacy Notice:Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

after newsletter promotion

Estêvãoâ€s intervention sparked wild scenes and led to Maresca receiving a second yellow card for his celebrations. Chelseaâ€s head coach will serve a touchline ban when his team visit Nottingham Forest.

Willy Caballero, Marescaâ€s assistant, was left to conduct post-match media duties. “Heâ€s OK,†Caballero said of Maresca. “He cannot be here because of the red card. He wanted me to praise the players because of the effort they have done today. We deserved the victory because of the chances we created.â€

Source link

• 

  Beth LindopSep 29, 2025, 06:14 PM ET

  Close

  Based in Liverpool, Beth Lindop is ESPN’s Liverpool correspondent and also covers the WSL and UWCL.

Liverpool forward Hugo Ekitike said he can learn from teammate Alexander Isak and is confident he can play alongside the Sweden international.

Ekitike joined the Premier League champions from Eintracht Frankfurt in July and has four goals in seven games this season, while Isak arrived in a British-record deal from Newcastle United on transfer deadline day.

Editor’s Picks

2 Related

Outside the club, there has been a lot of debate about how head coach Arne Slot will manage the two players, but Ekitike said such competition is to be expected at a team of Liverpool’s stature.

“We play at such a big club,” the France international said. “They cannot have only one striker, so it is good he is here. I still have a lot of things to improve and learn. That is for the coach to decide who plays, it’s not up to me. I played with two strikers before and one striker, so I can do a lot of things, so if we have to play together, I can do that.”

Despite his fine start to life in a Liverpool shirt, Ekitike left Slot frustrated last week when he was sent off in his team’s 2-1 victory over Southampton in the Carabao Cup. As a result, the 23-year-old missed Saturday’s clash with Crystal Palace — a game that Liverpool lost 2-1.

“It wasn’t smart,” Ekitike said of his red card. “I felt disappointed to watch the boys from home [on Saturday], but I apologised to everyone already. That kind of thing won’t happen again, so I move on and focus on football.”

Liverpool will look to bounce back from the weekend’s defeat when they take on Galatasaray in the Champions League on Tuesday night. However, the Reds will be without forward Federico Chiesa for the game at RAMS Park after he picked up a knock at Selhust Park.

“He got a little niggle in the last game against Palace,” Slot said in his prematch news conference. “He tried it in training today but he couldn’t end the session, so we decided not to take him because in a few days it is Chelsea.”

The Liverpool boss added: “Win, lose or draw, if you want to compete for trophies and wear a Liverpool shirt you have to give your all and play with good football. We conceded so many chances against Palace, so we can improve and those things I will show them tonight to the players.”

Source link

There is another world, not so very different from this one, in which Newcastle took the pragmatic decision early in the summer that Alexander Isak was leaving, there wasnâ€t much they could do about it, and they might as well make the best of it: selling players at a profit, after all, is just what clubs on the rise have to do.

That was always true to an extent, but has become especially so in a world governed by profitability and sustainability rules (PSR). They could have taken the £125m, bought players at their leisure, and the sense going into the season would probably have been one of quiet satisfaction at a decent summer.

There has, at least, been an attempt to address some obvious issues in the squad. Callum Wilson was getting old; Yoane Wissa is not only an upgrade but his pace and capacity to pull wide make him a more natural fit for the dynamic counterattacking approach Eddie Howe favours.

Anthony Elanga brings pace and directness on the right and is probably a step up from Jacob Murphy. Jacob Ramsey adds to their creative options. There may be a sense that Malick Thiaw has not quite kicked on as many hoped he would when he first emerged at Schalke but, at 24, heâ€s a good young defender who adds depth and may yet develop.

Alexander Isakâ€s goal at Wembley helped Newcastle to Carabao Cup glory – but that triumph has a slight taint now. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

The shadow of Isak, though, and more specifically the acrimonious nature of his departure, hangs over everything. Is Nick Woltemade better than Isak? Obviously not. But is Woltemade plus Wissa potentially better in a year or two than Isak plus Wilson? Possibly.

In terms of transfer value, the two pairs roughly cancel (while opening up significant PSR headroom given the nature of amortisation). But because so much emotional energy was invested in keeping Isak, Newcastleâ€s season has begun in a funk: not great, not terrible, but dominated by three 0-0 draws that have highlighted the absence of a high-class centre-forward.

Even the Carabao Cup triumph has a slight taint now. How can fans settle down to watch a rerun knowing the clinching goal was scored by somebody many would be dismissing as a rat just a few months later?

It is both the blessing and the curse of the big one-club, post-industrial cities of the north that the identification of club and city is so strong. Thatâ€s why that victory at Wembley in March stimulated such a feeling of civic pride, but also why Isak provoked such strong reactions: in rejecting Newcastle United, he was also rejecting the city and its people.

What Newcastle are going through now is the equivalent of a painful break-up, reminders of lost love materialising at every turn. That feeling is likely to be particularly acute on Sunday as they face Arsenal, against whom Isak excelled last season. He scored the winner in the league at St James†Park – a glorious header from Anthony Gordonâ€s outswinging cross – and then in both legs of the Carabao Cup semi-final.

skip past newsletter promotion

Sign up to Football Daily

Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football

Privacy Notice:Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

after newsletter promotion

Isak was not local but had been taken to local hearts, an emblem of a possible future competing with the very best

Arsenal did beat Newcastle in May, when Isak was absent, but Newcastleâ€s physicality unsettled them in the first three meetings of the campaign. They also beat Arsenal 1-0 at home the previous season, a series of games that has seemingly contributed to Mikel Artetaâ€s adoption of an increasingly physical and cautious approach.

Woltemade did score the winner against Wolves and has produced enough nice touches while sporting distinctive facial hair to raise the possibility he could become a cult figure, but – assuming he starts – facing Gabriel Maghalães and William Saliba or Cristhian Mosquera is a whole new level of challenge.

Why, then, given the near-inevitability of Isakâ€s departure and the futility of keeping a player against his will, and the fact his sale could have been made into a positive, creating PSR headroom for significant spending, did Newcastle wait until the last minute to take the money?

On one level it was simply a failure of leadership. With the sporting director, Paul Mitchell, having left in June, there was a vacuum, nobody to make the decision or to present the boardâ€s position to the public. But perhaps it stung particularly because deep in the folk consciousness of the club is a memory of the 1980s, when Newcastle were forced to sell Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley and Paul Gascoigne, contributing to the sense of the club as a diminished entity. Isak was not, as those three were, local – but he had been taken to local hearts and become an emblem of a possible future competing with the very best.

Nick Woltemade scores against Wolves – but the prospect of facing Arsenalâ€s defenders is a far bigger challenge for Newcastleâ€s new signing. Photograph: Richard Lee/Shutterstock

There is an echo of the sale of Andy Cole to Manchester United in 1995, the same bewilderment at letting a prolific forward join a Premier League rival, but at least then Kevin Keegan appeared on the steps to explain the decision and there followed a few months later the world-record signing of Alan Shearer. Sir John Hallâ€s largesse in funding transfers had not stopped. Whether the Saudis remain so committed is less clear.

Ambitious talk of a move to a new stadium in Leazes Park in March seemed a reaffirmation of their commitment, but little has happened since, beyond a petition being raised to save the park. Perhaps there will be progress now David Hopkinson is installed as chief executive, but no decisions are expected until next year at the earliest, in line with the Saudi Public Investment Fundâ€s (PIF) general policy of retrenchment.

The “strategic realignment†is particularly directed at investments outside Saudi Arabia and, while it may be true that PIF has become frustrated by PSR as a check on the pace of growth, the regulations also serve as useful cover for investors scaling back. As the Swiss Ramble football finance Substack pointed out, a £73m loss from 2021-22 falls out of PSR consideration this year, meaning Newcastle can make a loss of about £80m this financial year and still be compliant.

And thatâ€s the other – ultimately more unsettling – element of the Isak debacle. Itâ€s not just that he will be missed; itâ€s what he represents. He was the symbol of Newcastleâ€s imagined future as an elite club with world-class players, a bellwether of the success the Saudi money could bring. Now Isak has gone, and so too has much of optimism about the transformational impact PIFâ€s investment could have.

Source link

Sep 21, 2025, 01:03 PM ET

Eddie Howe admitted his Newcastle team will be a different attacking side this season without Alexander Isak, after watching the 0-0 draw at his former club Bournemouth.

It was the third goalless draw in a row away from home for Howe’s side and the head coach says other players must now step up to fill the void left by Isak’s move to Liverpool.

Howe said: “It’s three 0-0s away from home for us, which is really uncommon with our attacking style.

“I think just naturally we’re going to be a different team attacking-wise this year without Alex.”

Following Isak’s £125 million ($168.4m) switch, Newcastle acted quickly to bring in Yoane Wissa, who is expected to miss the next month with injury, and Nick Woltemade, who led the line at the Vitality Stadium in a game of very few chances.

“I thought Nick played really well today,” Howe said. “I thought he was very effective with his footwork and his link play.

“But we just need to know and get used to him and his style more and get more runners off him because he’s very good in that respect.

“I’m hopeful we’re evolving to a different team, hopefully a better team, but it may take a bit of time.”

Eddie Howe admitted Newcastle are trying to adapt to a new style without star striker Alexander Isak. Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images

On the plus side for Howe, it is now four clean sheets in five games this season — no mean feat against in-form Bournemouth, who managed just two shots on target to the visitors’ one.

Andoni Iraola’s side did have the ball in the net when David Brooks lashed in Evanilson’s cut-back in the first half but it was ruled out for a marginal offside by VAR.

Newcastle’s best effort came at the end of a slick move involving Woltemade and Sandro Tonali to tee up Jacob Murphy for a shot from a tight angle which Djordje Petrovic turned around the post.

– Bournemouth, Newcastle play out 0-0 bore draw
– ‘Favourite footballer’: Scholes, Grealish hail Pedri
– First-month grades for all 20 Premier League teams

“We respected each other a lot,” Iraola said. “It was very different from the last Bournemouth versus Newcastle games.

“If there was a team closer to scoring, I think it was Bournemouth.

“In some games we’ve been more brilliant and we’ve made more of a difference, but we’ve been competitive in every game.

“Even the game we lost against Liverpool, we were there until the last minute. Today, it was a different kind of game, very close.”

Iraola claimed Newcastle defender Malick Thiaw should have been sent off for a challenge on Ryan Christie, having already been booked.

“The Newcastle bench decided to take him out, it’s a clear second yellow,” the Spaniard said. “I don’t know if it would make a difference because there wasn’t much [time] remaining.”

Source link

Sep 12, 2025, 06:26 AM ETNewcastle United boss Eddie Howe has admitted his relationship with Alexander Isak became “difficult” after…

Beth LindopSep 12, 2025, 05:00 AM ETCloseBased in Liverpool, Beth Lindop is ESPN’s Liverpool correspondent and also covers the WSL…

Liverpool visit Burnley this weekend as they look to continue their 100 per cent record in the Premier League this…

Liverpool striker Alexander Isak is unlikely to feature from the start before next Saturday’s Merseyside derby with Everton.Liverpool’s club-record signing…

The Buffalo Sabres have been considered to have one of the deepest prospect pools in the NHL, which is in…