Liverpool broke the British transfer record to sign Alexander Isak for \u00a3125m from Newcastle on deadline day but were foiled in an attempt to end a stunning window with a deal for Marc Gu\u00e9hi.<\/p>\n
On a contrasting day for the Premier League champions, Isak underwent a medical on Merseyside before signing a six-year contract worth around \u00a3300,000 a week. Liverpool also stepped up efforts to sign the Crystal Palace captain, Gu\u00e9hi, who had a medical in London in anticipation of joining Arne Slot\u2019s side after Steve Parish, the Palace chair, accepted \u00a335m plus \u00a35m in add-ons for the defender.<\/p>\n
But Palace dramatically pulled the plug<\/a> on the deal when they failed to sign an experienced replacement. Liverpool had submitted a deal sheet to complete the transfer after the 7pm deadline when it collapsed. A Palace bid for Brighton\u2019s Igor Julio fell through and a move for another higher-profile centre-back also failed to materialise.<\/p>\n Oliver Glasner, the Palace manager, is understood to have been furious at the decision to accept Liverpool\u2019s offer and reiterated his plea not to sell his captain during heated talks with Parish. There were even fears that the Austrian, who led Palace to their first trophy when they won the FA Cup in May, could step down after making it clear that they must keep hold of Gu\u00e9hi to have a successful season.<\/p>\n The England international is in the final year of his contract at Selhurst Park and has no intention of signing an extension. Liverpool may renew their attempts to sign Gu\u00e9hi in January but he could have interest from Barcelona and Bayern Munich if he becomes a free agent next summer. Parish had said after Palace\u2019s win in the Community Shield last month that it would be in the club\u2019s best interests to sell Gu\u00e9hi rather than lose him for free.<\/p>\n Despite missing out on their main central defensive target Liverpool managed to end the summer\u2019s longest and most acrimonious transfer saga in their favour with the record signing of Isak. Liverpool had a \u00a3110m bid for the 25-year-old rejected on 1 August. Newcastle\u2019s position at that time was that Isak was not for sale. However, his subsequent strike and public statements allied to their \u00a370m signing of Nick Woltemade<\/a> and attempts to sign either Yoane Wissa or J\u00f8rgen Strand Larsen encouraged Liverpool to submit a higher offer on Sunday night.<\/p>\n Newcastle accepted a fixed fee of \u00a3125m with no add-ons. The cancellation of loyalty bonuses to Isak means the deal is effectively worth \u00a3130m to Newcastle, who paid \u00a355m to sign Wissa from Brentford<\/a>. Wissa behaved similarly to Isak to force his move to St James\u2019 Park.<\/p>\n Alexander Isak scored 27 goals in all competitions for Newcastle last season. Photograph: Phil Noble\/Reuters<\/p>\n \u201cI want to create history. I want to win trophies,\u201d said Isak. \u201cThat\u2019s ultimately the biggest motivation for me and I feel like this is the perfect place for me to grow even further and to take my game to the next level and help the team as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like this is the next step for me in my career. I\u2019m super happy that I\u2019ve been given this chance and I\u2019m very motivated to do something well with it.\u201d<\/p>\n The fee for Isak falls short of Newcastle\u2019s \u00a3150m valuation but still represents a British transfer record and the second time this summer that Liverpool have broken their own transfer record. The champions paid \u00a3100m plus \u00a316m in add-ons for Florian Wirtz in June and the Isak deal will take their total summer spending above \u00a3440m. Liverpool have recouped more than \u00a3210m in player sales.<\/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 information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data 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 Isak in effect downed tools this summer. He refused to play in a pre-season friendly against Celtic and did not go on Newcastle\u2019s pre-season tour of Asia, citing a thigh injury. Since then he has been absent from the squad, at one stage training alone at his former club Real Sociedad, and has not spoken to the Newcastle manager, Eddie Howe, for more than a fortnight. Howe said pointedly on Friday that morale was strong within the Newcastle squad after a difficult opening two weeks of pre-season. Isak was part of pre-season training for only the first two weeks.<\/p>\n The centre-forward accused Newcastle of breaking a commitment that he could leave if a suitable offer came from a big club and refused overtures from the club hierarchy to reopen negotiations over a new contract. A meeting at his home last Monday proved decisive. Isak informed a delegation that included representatives of Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund, Newcastle\u2019s financial backers, that he would never play for the club again. The Newcastle contingent left within 45 minutes and moves were soon made to sign Woltemade.<\/p>\n Liverpool\u2019s deadline-day business did not end with Isak and Gu\u00e9hi. The champions accepted an offer from Aston Villa to sign Harvey Elliott on a season\u2019s loan with an obligation to buy the England Under-21 international for \u00a335m next summer. Liverpool also received approaches from Milan, Brighton and Palace for Joe Gomez in the final 24 hours of the transfer window but doubts over the Gu\u00e9hi deal \u2013 well founded, as it turned out \u2013 meant they did not consider letting Gomez leave. Including the \u00a335m for Elliott, Liverpool recouped \u00a3245m in transfer fees this window.<\/p>\n Liverpool believe their central defensive options of Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konat\u00e9, Gomez and the new signing Giovanni Leoni, who is regarded as a potentially elite talent, should cover the failure to sign Gu\u00e9hi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool broke the British transfer record to sign Alexander Isak for \u00a3125m from Newcastle on deadline day but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-390410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115131568855072067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390410","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=390410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}