Newcastle have ‘deluded fanbase’ as Alexander Isak ‘deserves’ Liverpool move

Are Newcastle fans deluded if they think they can keep Alexander Isak? And without him, have Liverpool actually strengthened at all?

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Newcastle fans are deluded on Isak
Really now this Isak thing has dragged on long enough and should be brought to a close.

Newcastle fans have cried every cry that can be cried, the latest being: if you want him then pay the price of 150mil which we arbitrarily plucked out of nether regions as a club (current market valuation widely available online being 120mil – coincidentally what Liverpool “the cartel villains” are offering).

The simple counter to this nonsense is if you value him at that price and want to keep him then you have to be willing to offer him wages commensurate with your valuation of him.

Reports at the end of June said Newcastle were willing to offer him 150000 a week. Can you see why maybe this doesn’t make any sense? Equivalent strikers (eg Haaland/Salah in the Premier League) are earning 2-3 times more than this.

Isak is turning 26 next month, he is entering his peak footballing and earning years of a short career. Why on earth would he accept a wage 30-50% that of equivalent players in the league. Would you work for less than half than the person beside you? Of course you wouldn’t.

All other arguments are straw men constructions by a passionate but at this point deluded fanbase. Yes you can technically hold this player to his now 100k a week contract, a third of what Liverpool are offering for the next 3 years of his career at a club he has no natural ties to. Is that your plan? If so then smearing Isak and Liverpool daily seems massively hypocritical to me.

Wake up and smell the coffee lads, Isak deserves and is entitled to Nespresso and you’re only able to offer Maxwell House. It’s time to let go gracefully and save whatever dignity you can at this point.
Dave LFC (and net spend really should be within the grasp of anyone capable of basic addition and subtraction but reflecting on the above maybe you’re not)

READ: Newcastle are the Isak of the Premier League as misery compounded by Chelsea

Man does not like long mails and fancy words
As for Sam Thompson’s mail earlier : TL;DR.

Many long and fancy words do not make a fully coherent point. If you want to sat ‘I don’t want Isak to play for Liverpool because he’s trying to f*** Newcastle over his contract’, just say that.

We don’t need all the other mealy mouthed shite!
A, LFC, Montreal

Are Liverpool really stronger this season?
I think Liverpool might live to regret their raft of sales this summer. Obviously the club has spent big already with Wirtz, Ekitike, Kirkez, Leoni and Frimpong, but considering our healthy PSR position I don’t think there was pressing need to sell after this outlay, and certainly not to the £170m extent they have.

However, Liverpool have done what they do and when a player’s market value is offered, when they feel they could ultimately upgrade, they sell. But looking at the squad currently, there seems significant holes where injuries might leave us unnecessarily exposed.

Now, Liverpool might subsequently bring in more bodies which covers these holes, and if so I’ll bench my concern. However, apart from Guehi, which is probably less than 50/50 I am not aware of any other expected replacements coming in. Obviously, I am assuming Isak does not arrive, and that assumption is based on Newcastle being the ultimate decision makers on what happens, and their insistence throughout the summer has been they need a top quality striker and a backup before letting Liverpool try and meet their £150m valuation. I don’t think they will find the top quality striker and I don’t think Liverpool plan on paying £150m. So my guess is it doesn’t happen.

So assuming there are no more incomings, as things stand, our defence seems reasonably stocked. Leoni has replaced Quansah. Liverpool clearly rate Leoni and must think he has more potential to be a starter than Quansah did. My concern is an 18 year old arriving from a weaker Italian league constitutes far more risk than keeping the 22 year old relatively experienced CB we already had, but the proof will be in the pudding.

Midfield has changed little over the summer. Assuming we don’t sell or buy anyone we’re in reasonable shape.

And so we arrive at attack and where those gaping holes I previously mentioned reside. Last season we had multiple options across the front line. At LW Gakpo, Diaz and Nunez could compete and at CF we had Diaz, Nunez and Jota. Even on the right, where Salah is a near ever present and didn’t have AFCON, we had Salah with Jota and Chiesa who could cover.

This season our options on the left are Gakpo and Wirtz and at CF we have Ekitike. As Slot himself said, we have a single striker in our squad. We have less cover on the right too, and assuming Gomez and Bradley continue their perma-crocked status, we can’t even use Frimpong there. It will be a huge step down in Chiesa. If we were unfortunate and Salah and Ekitike picked up knocks, it is likely our best cover would be to stick Gakpo up top where he has previously struggled, move Wirtz out of 10 and into LW and play Chiesa on the right. That’s significantly less intimidating.

This is before we mention Slot’s much discussed rotation policy. Last season the biggest criticism he faced was that he didn’t rotate enough. Subsequently, as we moved into March, April and May the team tired and we played our worst football. We crashed out of Champs League, were comfortably outplayed in the League Cup final and fell over the line in the league. This is not to unfairly criticise, but to remind people that relying on a core 14/15 man squad in so many competitions burns players out. Slot himself acknowledged this and discussed increasing rotation to leave players fresher for the second half of the season. But you need the competition and quality in depth for this.

Apart from attacking midfield, GK and FB’s we seem even worse off than last season. This is not to say the starting 11 is not better. Upgrades in CAM, LB and CF are great, but if it came at the expense of being extremely thin on the ground in attacking positions, I just don’t see the benefit.

I have to assume Liverpool plan on strengthening but with a little over 2 weeks before the window closes, it seems a high risk strategy so far. The apparent plan, if Liverpool could wave a magic wand, is Isak and Guehi arriving. It immediately remedies the vast majority of the issues. Guehi, unlike Leoni, is a top quality, established international. He can play right from the get go and Liverpool can utilise 3 at the back to lighten the load on the LW and RW positions with Kirkez (or Robertson) and Frimpong (or Bradley) as wing backs providing the width down the length of the pitch and Isak and Ekitike playing as 2 CF’s. Or you can adopt Amorim esque number 10’s with Szoboszlai and Wirtz and one of Ekitike or Isak. Either way you play without the RW and LW positions. The availability of 3 top quality CB’s offers vital tactical flexibility and opportunity to rest Gakpo and Salah whilst fielding an exceptionally high quality starting 11.

With Isak brought in we have rotational flexibility and injury cover for the striker position. Without we are exceptionally exposed and face a sharp drop off in quality who ever is picked to replace Ekitike.

The problem is, Liverpool are occasionally too pragmatic for their own good. They know they can get Guehi for free in 12 months and won’t pay over the odds, if a stalemate ensues and he doesn’t come, that tactical flexibility disappears with him. If Newcastle decide to keep Isak, what other options will Liverpool have this late in the window?

And more importantly, if they don’t think there is a player who can improve them at a reasonable price, they simply will hold fire and wait until that situation changes at a coming transfer window. Which is reasonable, but does raise the question why they sold both Nunez and Diaz when either could have provided the cover it looks like they desperately need…?

I trust the club to get it right, but right now I fear we have taken a gamble that won’t pay off….
Ed Ern

F365’s 2025/26 season predictions: Gyokeres or Mbeumo flop, title split, sack race, Isak Golden Boot

Links Africa
So with football back proper this weekend everyone is filling up fantasy football squads and making league predictions including the F365 staff, my thoughts are also drifting to the long-term outlook but in a specific direction.

Perennial challengers Man City and Liverpool as well as Spurs and Man Utd (amongst others) will be losing important players in Dec-Jan to the African Nations Cup, while Arsenal, Villa, Newcastle and Leeds have none, obviously some players are squad fillers so are less of a loss, why did this not feature as even a statement in any of the 365 predictions?

Thoughts on how this will affect individual and team seasons? Salah, Marmoush, Ait-Nouri, Onana and Mbuemo are all important players for their teams so can we now confidently state Salah is out of the Golden Boot race?

Forest and Sunderland are particularly affected with I think 6 and 7 players respectively.

Answers on a postcard people.
Nick K (whiling the hours away), Kent

Come on Sunderland, says Toon fan
I’m a big fan of the mailbox but a bit sick of reading about net spend and Isak, so how about something completely different.

I’m a Newcastle fan, and I hope Sunderland do really well this year and stay up.

I’m just looking forward to the Tyne-Wear derbies. There’s something special about the prospect of getting one over on your local rivals; something especially satisfying. They’re some of the games you take note of when the fixtures get released.

I was at St. James’ when Middlesbrough got relegated and it was a great laugh, staying back to heckle the Middlesbrough players as they got on the bus. Great fun at the time, but now we’ve had no local derbies for the best part of a decade. And they’ve been missed.

So come on Sunderland, get enough points to stay up (though none off us) so we can do it all again next year.

Are any other Newcastle fans hoping Sunderland do well? Are any other teams’ fans hoping their rivals stay in the league?
Adam G, NUFC, Japan

Better than Messi? Really?
Was reading the mailbox at lunch and this line from Lee’s email stood out regarding Yamal:

Actually he’s doing better than Messi at this age which suggests by the time he’s at peak he’ll be scoring more than Messi did

By this logic, Cherno Samba should have been the greatest striker of all time.

Surely, considering Messi was arguably the GOAT for pretty much the entirety of his career, Yamal has A VERY LONG WAY to go.
John Matrix AFC

Delayed replacement
I’ve not seen anyone talking about Sami Hypia being replaced by VVD before – their time at Liverpool was nine years apart!!!
Tom, London

Spursy or not Spursy?
While we all expect Spurs to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Sam’s opening email in the morning Mailbox gave me a particular chuckle. Upon reading it, I thought, “wow, Spurs supporters are out here reacting to sh*t that ain’t happened yet, how Spursy is that?”

Then, of course, the next five mails demonstrated that he was absolutely right. Can it be that the expectation of unjust abuse is part of what defines Spursiness? And is that really my empathy I feel being engaged? Dammit.
Chris C, Toon Army DC