{"id":240667,"date":"2025-07-05T17:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T17:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/240667\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T17:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T17:52:09","slug":"transfer-news-live-liverpools-isak-snub-gyokeres-to-arsenal-as-man-utd-unveil-signing-football-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/240667\/","title":{"rendered":"Transfer news LIVE: Liverpool’s Isak snub, Gyokeres to Arsenal as Man Utd unveil signing | Football | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liverpool<\/a>‘s former director of research, Ian Graham, spent over a decade at Anfield and was involved in discussions deciding between Darwin Nunez<\/a> and Alexander Isak<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Reds bought Nunez for an initial fee of \u00a364million, which could reach as high as a then-club-record \u00a385m, but they were mulling over whether Isak would have been the better option at the time.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2022, Isak had scored just six La Liga<\/a> goals for Real Sociedad across an entire season, down from 17 the previous campaign.<\/p>\n

Nunez, meanwhile, had bagged nearly a goal per game for Benfica and was one of the hottest prospects on the market.<\/p>\n

Liverpool<\/a> opted for Nunez and Newcastle<\/a> bought the dip on Isak, albeit at \u00a363m, with the Swede since doubling his direct rival striker\u2019s goal tally in the Premier League<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But their situations could have been drastically different, as Graham detailed that former Liverpool<\/a> boss Jurgen Klopp<\/a> was the deciding factor and swayed the decision to sign Nunez rather than Isak.<\/p>\n

\u201cJurgen created a lot of success for the club, so it\u2019s understandable why it moved in that direction,\u201d Graham told the Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy to talk about my colleagues persuading Jurgen [in 2017] that Mo Salah<\/a> was the player to buy instead of Julian Brandt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2022, he signed Darwin Nunez instead of Alexander Isak. Both players, if you look at top young centre-forwards in Europe, they would be number one and two \u2014 or two and three but [Erling] Haaland<\/a> was going to [Manchester] City<\/a> and out of our price range.<\/p>\n

\u201cJurgen preferred Nunez. It would be very churlish of me to say: \u2018It\u2019s terrible that Jurgen had his choice\u2019, when in the past Jurgen had been persuaded by me and my colleagues of a different choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it was still the case that we signed good players \u2014 in Nunez\u2019s case, one of the best young strikers in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool‘s former director of research, Ian Graham, spent over a decade at Anfield and was involved in discussions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[6167,748,6274,393,4884,179,763,1036,423,10652,16,15,165],"class_list":{"0":"post-240667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-arsenal-fc","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-chelsea-fc","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-liverpool-fc","15":"tag-manchester-city-fc","16":"tag-manchester-united-fc","17":"tag-tottenham-hotspur-fc","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-viktor-gyokeres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114801904496552135","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}