There is no sugar-coating it now. There can be no more claim or counter-claim about what Alexander Isak might be thinking and it blows apart Newcastle United’s policy of containment this summer. They have attempted to tough it out, to see through a testing transfer window with the aim of keeping their best player, tip-toeing around the fact that he is refusing to play for them. They have not attacked him.
In Eddie Howe’s words, they have kept the door “well and truly open.”
Isak has shown Newcastle — his team-mates, staff and fans — what he thinks of that door, slamming it in Howe’s face and setting fire to the entire building while he is at it. Although he has not yet submitted an official transfer request, he has done the next worst thing. By going public the intention is to force through a move to Liverpool. The result is a ratcheting up of pressure and a further souring of relations before the two clubs play on Monday night.
The initial response from the top at Newcastle was to dig in further. With the end of the transfer window racing towards them, there is no longer an obvious replacement for Isak, let alone the two strikers they would need if his departure was sanctioned (they played without an established centre-forward at Villa Park last weekend). A lack of money has not been their issue, but rather a lack of options. As they said in their own statement, “The conditions of a sale this summer have not transpired.”
For now, they are insisting that Isak stays: “We do not foresee those conditions being met.” In private, their mood has hardened, which may not quite be what Isak and his camp intended. There has been frustration at Isak’s stance, the influence of his representatives and irritation with the nature of Liverpool’s pursuit, but there was a longer, calmer game to be played. Behind the diplomacy of the public insistence that Isak remains “part of our family and will be welcomed back when he is ready to rejoin his teammates,” there is also fury.
And, yes, before anybody points this out, a comparable situation has been taking place in reverse at Brentford with Yoane Wissa, a longstanding Newcastle target who is engaged in his own guerrilla warfare against his present employers, flying home early from a training camp, not playing for the club in pre-season and most recently removing all links to Brentford on his social media platforms. In football, you will find the moral high ground balancing on a pinhead.
Howe has attempted to keep a path back open to Isak (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
How the next few days play out is unknown — Liverpool will surely return with an improved bid for Isak after their recent £110 million offer was rejected out of hand — but it will no longer be played out in a neutral tone. All through the close season and beyond, Howe has been careful not to inflame a damaging situation further, always hoping that Isak could be reintegrated. There has been no public, personal criticism.
He has done that knowing he must tread a delicate line. Hang Isak out to dry and then how do you bring him back, which is ultimately what Newcastle have wanted, knowing that there is nobody better out there? Pander to him and what message does that send to the other players in his dressing room? Is it OK to behave badly? By making him train alone but offering him a path to return, Howe has attempted to play fair to everybody.
Newcastle refute Isak’s claims about “promises” being made and the suggestion that he (or his people) had informed them that 2024-25 would be his final season at St James’ Park. “We are clear in response that Alex remains under contract and that no commitment has ever been made by a club official that Alex can leave Newcastle United this summer,” they said. Transfers or non-transfers are often a case of wearing, dismal, competing agendas and differing versions of the truth, but even if the Sweden international had right on his side, he is way in the wrong in how he has confronted it.
What is a long-term contract if not a promise to play for and represent the club who bought you? Surely that is the most basic definition of trust, one which isn’t just spoken out loud or signified by a handshake or a nod, but written down and signed.
How does it serve Isak’s cause to behave like this? It obliterates his relationship with the fans who have adored him, it shows zero empathy for the players who have fought alongside him in a team which has made spirit its calling card and the lack of respect afforded to Howe is abysmal.
When Isak joined Newcastle from Real Sociedad for £63m in 2022, he was viewed as a player of great potential but with flakiness and inconsistency baked in. His spell at Borussia Dortmund had been poor. On Tyneside, he has developed into one of the world’s most adept and deadly centre-forwards and although he must take great credit for that transformation, it is Howe’s coaching that has brought it out of him.
There are ways of doing things, ways of leaving (this applies to Wissa just as much). Newcastle supporters reel at the notion of losing their best players, because down the decades it has happened too many times — from Paul Gascoigne to Andy Carroll — but if, back in May, Isak had said that having helped deliver a trophy and seal a return to the Champions League, he wished to move on for another challenge, for more money, there might have been a semblance of understanding.
In the meantime, keep your head down and work hard, give everything for the club which took a calculated gamble on you and which has given you this platform. By all means, be angry, but do your job and keep your promise.
In November last year, Wor Flags, the Newcastle fans group, spent thousands of pounds on a display for Isak. His name, in the blue and yellow of the Swedish flag, filled one end of the stadium. At the other, there was a picture of him above the legend “Alexander the Great.” This week, ahead of the Liverpool game, they have considered what to do, knowing that there is anger towards Isak but also knowing there is a power in words and an even bigger power in team, club, city, a collective.
That consideration has not been returned.
Maybe all is fair in love and football. Maybe Isak is just being honest in terms of how he feels and maybe he is desperate. But by releasing this statement on top of not playing, he has subverted the whole notion of a team in favour of himself. He has attempted to shut down the exit route which Howe painstakingly left for him.
Ahead of a fixture which was always going to be on the toxic side of lively, Isak might just have made things worse for everybody but that includes himself. Because more than ever, Newcastle insist he is going nowhere. And where would that leave him, aside from alone?
(Photo: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)
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