Alexander Isak left Newcastle United for Liverpool on deadline day.
The end of a lengthy saga, that became ever more bitter by the day.
A £130m deal eventually agreed, Liverpool setting a new record for a transfer fee paid by an English club.
Newcastle United accepting that the time had finally come to cut their ties with Alexander Isak.
A lot has been said about this saga, too much!
Alexander Isak finally getting his move to Anfield, still hasn’t brought the endless debate to an end.
Indeed, claims of Isak’s alleged bad behaviour in all of this, have actually gone to another level since he left Newcastle United.
Not only are people talking about how these past couple of months the Sweden striker did everything he could to leave Newcastle United.
Now there are claims that before the end of last season, Alexander Isak was also doing everything he could to make sure he would leave NUFC this summer.
With claims that Alexander Isak stopped trying for Newcastle United after the 16 March 2025 cup final win at Wembley.
That with 10 Premier League games remaining, he supposedly downed tools.
Amongst those making these claims, it included this extraordinary one from Luke Edwards at The Telegraph:
‘Indeed, some insiders suggested, from April onwards, Isak was behaving like someone who did not want the team to qualify for the Champions League, because it would make it harder for him to explain to Howe and the supporters why he wanted to go.’
These are astonishing claims to make BUT are they true?
Did Alexander Isak stop trying for the final two months and 10 games of the season, did he do everything he could to stop Newcastle United qualifying for the Champions League, was he only thinking of himself and not giving anything for the team or supporters?
Or on the other hand, is this just embarrassing invented nonsense from journalists and others, feeding nonsense to Newcastle United fans of even worse alleged Alexander Isak behaviour because they know many supporters will blindly lap it up?
Only one way to do that.
Going back over those last two months and ten Premier League matches of the season, fact-checking what Alexander Isak actually did and didn’t:
Newcastle 2 Brentford 1
With claims NUFC could experience a massive fall off in form after winning a trophy, Alexander Isak scored the crucial opening goal just before half-time in this first game after the cup final, was subbed off after 66 minutes, Tonali getting the eventual winner.
Leicester 0 Newcastle 3
Alexander Isak was subbed off after 72 minutes with the game won at 3-0, the whole United team coasting after going three up after only 34 minutes.
Newcastle 4 Man U 1
Alexander Isak with a brilliant assist for Tonali to open the scoring on 24 minutes. A dominant United performance and Isak subbed off on 78 minutes a minute after Man U went 4-1 down.
Newcastle 5 Palace 0
Alexander Isak scoring in an excellent 5-0 team performance, a great effort from all. Isak subbed off with the score 5-0 and 18 minutes remaining.
Villa 4 Newcastle 1
Nobody played well and Alexander Isak subbed off with 14 minutes to go and the scoring complete.
Newcastle 3 Ipswich 0
Alexander Isak scoring with the crucial opening goal on the stroke of half-time. Isak subbed off when 2-0 and 13 minutes to go, Osula adding a third goal.
Brighton 1 Newcastle 1
Newcastle by some distance the better team but everything going against them, especially referee/VAR decisions.
Somehow a goal down and defeat staring them in the face, Newcastle grabbing a vital point when a superbly cool Alexander Isak converts a penalty with only a minute to go.
Newcastle 2 Chelsea 0
Newcastle scoring through Tonali after only two minutes. Gordon looking for a penalty when going down in the box but nothing given, Chelsea looking to play the ball out from defence but Alexander Isak leading the high up the pitch pressure that ends up seeing the visitors lose the ball and within seconds Newcastle are on their way to a crucial victory. A jackson sending off sees the Newcastle team collectively fail to take advantage and end up doing a lot of defending, until a brilliant Bruno goal on 90 minutes puts the game to bed and in the final seconds Isak subbed off.
Arsenal 1 Newcastle 0
Eddie Howe reports afterwards that Alexander Isak missed the match through injury. In his absence, United dominate the opening half and create a lot of good chances but fail to finish. Rice getting Arsenal an undeserved winner in the second half.
Newcastle 0 Everton 1
Arguably the worst performance of the whole season. Nobody plays well including Alexander Isak, the striker playing the full game?
What is the verdict – Alexander Isak guilty or not across the final two months of the season?
Having looked back at what happened after the cup final, what do you think?
Well, if Alexander Isak was trying to do everything he could to sabotage Newcastle United getting into the Champions League, he had a very subtle way of going about it!
In the seven PL matches that followed the cup final, in five of the games he either scored or got an assist. The only exceptions were the defeat at Villa when everybody played poorly and he got zero service, plus the very easy win at Leicester when Newcastle were a goal up inside two minutes, 2-0 up inside 11 minutes and 3-0 on 34 minutes and the team strolled it.
Maybe most crucially, in those five matches where he scored or got an assist, Isak scored the crucial first Newcastle goal in three of the five and got that brilliant assist for the Tonali opener against Man U.
When Newcastle got that last gasp equaliser at Brighton, my thought at that moment was that it would very likely prove crucial to NUFC getting into the Champions League, which it did. If Alexander Isak was intent on sabotaging United’s Champions League hopes, missing such a high pressure penalty, nobody would have thought anything of it if he missed. In terms of doing it on purpose.
Alexander Isak started nine of Newcastle’s final ten matches, which hardly points to a lack of commitment. Whilst you can’t have it all ways if you then say he deliberately missed the Arsenal match to try and negatively affect United’s chances. Surely if you believe Isak was doing that in all these other matches, why wouldn’t he then have played at Arsenal and do the same???
As for that final game against Everton, Isak was as poor as the rest of them. For me he didn’t look anywhere near properly fit and yet played the full 90 minutes and added time. Some of you will say he wasn’t trying but the truth is that only Alexander Isak himself knows whether this is true, in that game and all the others. For me, why then didn’t Isak just sit down on the pitch and get subbed off, if he wanted to not contribute to Newcastle’s final day push?
What I do know for sure is that these claims that Alexander Isak wasn’t trying at all for the entire last two months and ten matches and attempting to stop Newcastle qualifying for the Champions League, surely you can all see that this is pathetic to try and stick that on him. Can’t you?
Alexander Isak deserves a whole load of criticism (and worse!) BUT we have to stick to the facts, we have to stick to those things that he does deserve to get massive loads of stick for. Not things that we also WANT to believe he has done, despite what the reality tells us.
The big danger for me is that the more people try to make these ridiculous non-trying claims across all of the last ten matches, then they simply make us all look a bit daft and it dilutes the blame that should be attached to Alexander Isak.
Outsiders will use these non-trying claims across the final two months to turn it against us, saying look at these daft Geordies claiming Alexander Isak was trying to stop them getting Champions League, when reality is that he was scoring crucial goals, getting assists etc and certainly across the first eight of those final ten PL games, playing a full part in the team getting the crucial wins and points. This then deflecting from what WAS his appalling behaviour these past couple of months in trying to force a move to Anfield.
Since the season ended, Alexander Isak has ‘successfully’ tainted his Newcastle United career.
He doesn’t need any help from journalists and fans making unsubstantiated and largely ridiculous claims about the final two months when he was playing, he’s achieved this all on his own post-playing!
