Newcastle<\/a> for Isak, when they closed the door,” Laurens told BBC Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n“That was before Isak went on strike and stopped training with them. Then Liverpool reverted to Ekitike, who was on his way to Newcastle in the first place because he was supposed to be the replacement, or to play together if nobody came in for Isak.”<\/p>\n
Ekitike joined the Reds in July and has made a solid start so far, scoring twice in the league and providing one assist.<\/p>\n
Isak, who signed on deadline day, made his debut against Atletico Madrid on Wednesday with Ekitike dropping to the bench, and Laurens says he thought that would always be the case.<\/p>\n
“We knew that as soon as Isak was fit, the one to be dropped was Ekitike. It was just very clear,” he said. “Can they play together? Of course they can. You could play Ekitike from the start but off the left, but that’s not really his position. I’m not sure how well it’s going to work.<\/p>\n
“It was just one of Ekitike and Isak [in the team] and it was never going to be Ekitike over Isak unless Isak is not fit.”<\/p>\n
See the full clip here, external<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European football expert Julien Laurens believes Hugo Ekitike would not have signed for Liverpool had he known Alexander…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-434339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115227022094548710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434339","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=434339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}