Eddie Howe is confident Alexander Isak will stay at Newcastle this summer despite omitting the striker from a pre-season thrashing by Celtic because of speculation over his future.<\/p>\n
Isak was left out of the 4-0 defeat at Celtic<\/a> Park on Saturday despite being fit to play. The Newcastle manager claimed the decision was taken to manage the striker\u2019s minutes in pre-season, but also as a consequence of recent transfer speculation.<\/p>\n Liverpool\u2019s long-held interest in the Sweden international was confirmed this week with the Premier League champions being prepared to pay a British record transfer fee to make him their new No 9.<\/p>\n Liverpool have since turned their attentions to Eintracht Frankfurt forward and Newcastle target Hugo Ekitike<\/a> after being informed Isak is not for sale. The champions remain in talks over a fee for Ekitike, who is understood to have a \u20ac100m (\u00a387m) release clause in his Eintracht contract, with a deal expected to be completed next week. Germany\u2019s Sky Sport reported on Saturday night that a second written bid had been submitted.<\/p>\n Howe admitted Newcastle are \u201cdesperate\u201d to keep Isak, who has three years remaining on his contract, but added he could not give \u201c100% clarity\u201d on any player\u2019s future.<\/p>\n The Newcastle manager said of the striker\u2019s absence in Glasgow: \u201cIt was my decision. He travelled back to Glasgow with us but I decided to send him home due to the speculation around him. The last thing he wanted is to be sat in the stand watching, that wasn\u2019t fair to him. But I\u2019m confident he will be a Newcastle player come the end of the window.\u201d<\/p>\n Howe, who also omitted Joelinton against the Scottish champions, added: \u201cIt\u2019s difficult for me to give 100% clarity on any player. Alex is happy at Newcastle, he loves the players, the staff, the team. I\u2019m confident he\u2019ll be here at the start of the season. Yes, I\u2019ve had discussions with him but that\u2019s not abnormal. I respect a player\u2019s career and how short it is. Alex has been really good, he\u2019s trained really well and I realise there\u2019ll be noise around him.\u201d<\/p>\n Liverpool\u2019s decision to go for Ekitike, who made it clear he favoured a move to Anfield over St James\u2019 Park before Newcastle pulled out of the race for the striker, represents another frustration in what has been a problematic transfer window for Howe.<\/p>\n Newcastle have also missed out on Jo\u00e3o Pedro, Bryan Mbeumo and Liam Delap while their long-running pursuit of Burnley\u2019s \u00a340m-rated goalkeeper James Trafford is now in doubt with Manchester City linked with their former player.<\/p>\n Howe and his nephew, Andy Howe, have been overseeing much of Newcastle\u2019s recruitment this summer, with Paul Mitchell having left as sporting director and Darren Eales due to depart on health grounds. They have completed only one signing so far, the \u00a355m purchase of Anthony Elanga from Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had a frustrating time in missing out on targets, I\u2019ll be open on that,\u201d said the Newcastle manager. \u201cBut we\u2019re confident we can get in some players who can strengthen the team. We wanted more.\u201d<\/p>\n Eddie Howe, alongside assistant Graeme Jones, endured a torrid time at Celtic Park on Saturday. Photograph: Stu Forster\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Celtic took the lead on Saturday from a 28th-minute Arne Engels penalty, then Johnny Kenny tapped in after Nick Pope misjudged an attempted clearance to make it 2-0 just before the break. Yang Hyun-jun and Liam Scales then added two more after both sides rang the changes at half-time, including Newcastle introducing Elanga for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eddie Howe is confident Alexander Isak will stay at Newcastle this summer despite omitting the striker from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-275913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114882423227769295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275913","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=275913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}