Liverpool head coach Arne Slot talks at length about £125m British transfer record signing Alexander Isak, whose struggles continued in the 1-1 draw with Sunderland
22:30, 05 Dec 2025Updated 22:36, 05 Dec 2025
Arne Slot has been talking about Alexander Isak, who has yet to hit the heights at Liverpool(Image: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
When it was put to Arne Slot that Alexander Isak is having so few touches while leading the Liverpool line on Friday, the head coach had a statistic up his sleeve that was enough to suggest the £125m striker’s contributions had been sufficiently analysed at the AXA Training Centre.
Isak, in his last two Anfield starts at Anfield in the Premier League, has had less than 30 touches of the ball. He is averaging 14 per game and while his goal at West Ham United last week was expertly taken, Wednesday night’s 1-1 draw with Sunderland once more saw the Sweden international on the periphery, taken off in the second period with Liverpool needing a goal.
The Reds boss informed the press on Friday morning that his new No.9 was only averaging 22 touches per game at his previous club, presenting the idea that even when Isak was plundering 23 goals for Newcastle United, he was often being used selectively in the build up.
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Such is a striker’s lot. Erling Haaland, arguably the greatest goalscorer of his generation, sees his output put under the microscope on those rare occasions that his name doesn’t appear on a Manchester City scoresheet, and at a time when Isak is still adapting to a new club with more sizable demands and ambitions – on the back of no pre-season and a month-long absence with a groin injury – it should be no shock that the most expensive forward in Liverpool and British-football history has yet to show why he was pursued so vigorously in the transfer window.
Slot says: “When I leave this room I am going to have breakfast and then medical staff will come in with a list of players who they feel might be a risk, might not be a risk. Risk is not a good word.
“He had a lot of workload is the way we describe it and I would be surprised when it comes to Alex’s name that they don’t say anything but I think he is getting closer and closer to having regular starts so it could mean he plays tomorrow or it could mean he plays Tuesday. I think physically after three or four months now he is getting closer and closer to that situation where he plays more, which we have already seen because I have played in two in a row.”
At St James’ Park, the Eddie Howe gameplan was tailored to present Isak with the best chances to score, with Jacob Murphy, in particular, a creative force for supplying his team-mate.
Many of the winger’s 12 assists last time out were for the former Real Sociedad man but at Anfield, he is having to modify his game to thrive with forwards like Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo, who will regularly cut inside and are tasked with sharing the goalscoring burden.
“With Jeremie Frimpong being injured and Conor Bradley being out, it is not like we have so many options on the right-hand side and it is a bit similar on the left side,” argues Slot. “Alex could benefit maybe from a Conor Bradley or a Jeremie Frimpong type of player, who goes outside, instead of both wingers we have who come inside and full-backs who can come in with crosses.
“But the main difference for him is that we are facing here many times a low block and it is not that it never happened at Newcastle but not as much I think. I think this season the league has changed, we see so many more low blocks than I saw last season. But I see this not only against us, I see this in many games.
“It makes it harder for him compared to his time at Newcastle but I think it is also him adjusting to his team-mates and his team-mates adjusting to him. But it is obvious and clear that we have not the profile of Jacob Murphy for example available at this moment at this time.
“I think the best way to judge that is if he scores five or six goals in three or four games. But I don’t think you can compare the two of them (Isak and Haaland) in terms of presence. One is, I don’t know how high and big, and Alex is slimmer. But the Alexander Isak who scored so many goals for Newcastle and was then standing there when we played the League Cup final and I thought: ‘I would love to have him in my team’ – he has presence.
Alexander Isak celebrates after scoring what proved to be the winning goal for Newcastle United against Liverpool in last season’s Carabao Cup final (Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
“Presence also comes with confidence and confidence comes with scoring a lot of goals and wins. He definitely has this presence, that’s what I felt and I think what our players felt when we played against him last season.”
Gerard Houllier used to suggest, over two decades ago, that he would only be worried about Michael Owen’s occasional droughts if the chances were drying up rather than the goals and, while such a stance remains a universal truth for the game’s deadliest centre-forwards, Isak is having to feast off scraps in that regard at present.
The 26-year-old has had just three shots on target inside the 18-yard box in his seven league appearances, which equates to one effort on goal every 158 minutes so far with the Reds. It’s far from an ideal return three months into his career on Merseyside, even if Slot will always attempt to look at things with a wider lens.
There is, though, a train of thought that suggests the ever dwindling attention span in the modern game has made it easier to forget that Isak, for all the indifference of recent weeks, had 54 Premier League goals in just 86 Newcastle appearances before he moved.
“I think I said back then that we signed him for six years, not for three months,” Slot argues. “And I’ve tried to make clear from the start how difficult the first few months would be for him. Every player wants to play 90 minutes, 90 minutes so it’s not nice for Alex to play 60, go off the next game and another one comes in and then he can play 60 again.
“That’s not the way you want to start your career at Liverpool. It is far, far from an ideal situation but, again, this club doesn’t buy a player for half a year. We bought him for six years. As a result of that, people are now coming with stats about his 12 games, in terms of minutes I’m sure it is less than 12 90 minute-games, but we are living in a grown-up world and the life of a striker is always like this.
“I assume he also had spells in his career when he didn’t score for a few games in a row. If you do what Alex has done I don’t think it would influence your confidence that much but of course it is nicer for a No.9 to start your career at a new club scoring immediately goal after goal. But that was so unrealistic straight away.
“I’ve tried to say it in my words without making it too obvious, but it’s almost something we could expect. If a player starts in the middle of a season, by 1 September we’d already played three games, and his level is not as high as the others and we have three games a week so there is hardly any time to train.
“And the level of the Premier League is not like other leagues I could mention, it does take time for any player to get to the levels we want. But I have no doubt that eventually he will become the player we signed him to be. Sometimes, like last week, he has already shown it.”