Isak would only be ‘fraud’, ‘mercenary’ and ‘unprofessional’ if he went on strike to leave Liverpool

Newcastle star Alexander Isak simply ‘wants a move to another club’. But if he was leaving Liverpool he would be a ‘fraud’, ‘mercenary’ and ‘out of order’.

John Aldridge starts his latest Liverpool Echo column remarkably strongly and must be commended for maintaining that level of quality throughout.

‘It won’t be long before a large dose of reality hits Newcastle United about Alexander Isak,’ he writes, without a single hint of irony.

‘And they may well have to allow him to sign for Liverpool before the month is out.’

Yep, it’s definitely Newcastle who could be hit by ‘a large dose of reality’ in this situation. How dare they not ‘allow’ him to join a club who haven’t bid enough to sign him yet?

‘Matters in the North East are starting to turn particularly ugly, and it will be very difficult to turn back the clock given the high emotions on both sides.’

It absolutely will, but it will also remain ‘very difficult’ for Liverpool to sign Isak unless they meet Newcastle’s valuation. And that really is still the most important part of this whole saga, with threats of never playing again doing little to change that.

Then comes the best bit:

‘Listen, Liverpool have had great players in the past like Javier Mascherano, Luis Suarez and Fernando Torres who wanted to leave the club. There was a little bit of kicking and screaming, but ultimately we had to open the door and say close it behind you. You can’t keep hold of players who don’t want to be at your club.’

All very sensible, reasonable and rational from Aldo. Fair play. Maybe Newcastle should grow up and just accept their fate.

And maybe we should all revisit a certain former Liverpool striker turned columnist’s thoughts from February 2011:

“Torres is simply a fake, a fraud and a mercenary who has gone for a huge pay rise. My five-year-old grandson refused to put his Torres shirt on over the weekend because even he was disgusted with him.”

Or these musings from an August 2010 Echo article:

‘Midfielder Javier Mascherano’s refusal to face Manchester City on Monday night was selfish and unprofessional. I can understand his frustration because he’s clearly desperate to move on but what he did was out of order and he let the club down badly.

‘Mascherano needs to remember that when Liverpool signed him in 2007 his career was going nowhere. He can’t expect the club to just drop the amount of cash they want for him so he can get away.

‘Players of Mascherano’s calibre are hard to find and we have to get the right fee.’

Well quite. Imagine if he’d scored 62 goals in 109 games.

A reminder that ‘a little bit of kicking and screaming’ when Liverpool are trying to avoid selling their best players for less than their perceived value actually translates to trashing them as ‘fake’, ‘frauds’, ‘mercenaries’, ‘selfish’, ‘unprofessional’ and ‘out of order’ through public platforms, underpinned by an insistence that those players ‘can’t expect the club to just drop the amount of cash they want for him so he can get away’ because such quality is ‘hard to find and we have to get the right fee’.

But when Liverpool are trying to sign someone else’s best player, said club really should just step aside and let the poor hostage go for whatever fee they are privileged and honoured enough to receive from Anfield.

And sometimes going on strike should be actively encouraged. But only to join Liverpool, never to leave. That is an actual crime.

MORE ALEXANDER ISAK COVERAGE FROM F365
👉 ‘Increasingly likely’ Isak outcome revealed as Liverpool set new price for ‘breakthrough’
👉 Newcastle fail again as £80m striker price tag kills Isak replacement deal

‘The focus now from Newcastle is surely to get the best deal they can without completely pricing Isak out of Liverpool’s reach.’

Remove the last eight words of that sentence and you’ve nailed it; Newcastle’s ‘focus’ will have nothing to do with benefiting Liverpool in any way.

‘The Reds will have a value for the player and Newcastle can’t afford to get too greedy.’

Swap the two clubs around in that sentence and you’ve nailed it.

Although to be fair, it is tough to figure out whether the Premier League champions spending more than anyone in the world this summer before bidding under a stated and public valuation is more or less ‘greedy’ than a team wanting to be fairly reimbursed for selling their star player who has three years left on his contract.

But hold on, Aldridge is not done. And thank Christ he isn’t because…

‘I’m speaking from experience given what happened to me at Real Sociedad.’

Ah yes, the great summer of 1991 when Aldridge was denied a nine-figure British record move to the league champions.

‘I told Sociedad I wanted to leave, and had to stick to my guns when they tried to force me to stay.’

He was sold in early July of that year so it must be said that Real Sociedad didn’t try and ‘force’ him to stay particularly hard.

‘They had every right to do that as I’d signed a contract to play for them. But I told them family came first, and that while I was awfully sorry, I simply had to leave. Eventually Sociedad agreed.

‘Now, the circumstances aren’t the same, but the ultimate goal for Isak is no different – he wants a move to another club.’

When he says ‘the circumstances aren’t the same’, he bloody well means it. Not really sure why Aldridge leaving Spain to join second-tier, newly-promoted Tranmere for £250,000 two months before he turned 33 more than three decades ago is in any way relevant to a 25-year-old Isak pushing for a move to a club in the same country who have not bid enough to sign him yet in 2025 but here we are.

‘Liverpool certainly have money to spend big given the amount of sales that continued with the departure of Darwin Nunez at the weekend and the likely exit soon of Harvey Elliott.’

Indeed. Yet it’s Newcastle who are in for ‘a large dose of reality’ and must ‘allow’ Isak to go for £40m under their valuation instead of being ‘greedy’.

At this point Mediawatch can only pray that Chelsea are planning a Spurs-style Isak hijack to melt Aldridge’s entire head and turn the Swede from innocent victim to fraudulent mercenary.