Alexander Isak's Journey at Liverpool: From Criticism to Key Player
Alexander Isak has never been short of critics. At Liverpool, sympathy has been in even shorter supply.
The resentment dates back to the strike at Newcastle, the stand-off that forced the club’s hand and opened the door for Liverpool’s nine-figure move. When he arrived on Merseyside without a proper pre-season, few were in the mood to indulge his rust. He looked nothing like the electric forward who had once stalked Erling Haaland’s status as the Premier League’s most terrifying No.9.
Then came December 20 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. For a fleeting moment, Liverpool saw exactly what they had paid for. Isak darted in behind, latched onto a perfectly weighted pass from Florian Wirtz and finished with icy calm. It was the type of move that makes a transfer fee look like a bargain.
A split-second later, it looked like a disaster. Micky van de Ven thundered into a reckless challenge, and Isak’s left fibula snapped. A season that had barely started was shattered with it.
When he finally returned a little over three months later, the damage ran deeper than the bone. Muscular issues kept flaring up, always traced back to the same root cause: no pre-season, no base, no rhythm. Isak needed games, minutes, the repetition that sharpens a striker’s instincts and hardens his body.
The calendar handed him a lifeline. The World Cup landed at exactly the right time.
In North America, he looked like a player reassembling himself. One goal, four goal contributions, but the real victory was volume: Isak played all but one minute of Sweden’s run to the round of 32. Ninety minutes after ninety minutes, the legs loosened, the touch returned, the timing sharpened.
Still, the questions trailed him back to Liverpool. Could he stay fit? Could he truly fit Andoni Iraola’s relentless, front-foot football?
Even when he opened his Premier League account for the 2026-27 season in a 2-2 draw with Nottingham Forest on August 29, the doubters stayed loud. Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock was at Anfield that day and left unconvinced.
“Isak, apart from his goal, did absolutely nothing. He was so poor. He didn't look interested at all,” Warnock told GOAL. “This is the guy who's meant to have had a proper pre-season, coming back hungry, fit, proving what he can do. And he didn't look like he could.
“He didn't look like he could carry the shirt. And that's a huge problem. It's that weight of expectation of the price tag to deliver.
“He doesn't look at the races at the moment. And whether that's just a little bit of an understanding with the other players around him. But you're training every single day. You should understand the game by now.”
That felt like a line in the sand.
The response came fast.
The following Friday at Ipswich, Isak dragged Liverpool to their first win of the season with a ruthless brace in a 2-0 victory. The finishing was sharp, the movement decisive. The doubts didn’t vanish, but they were forced to retreat.
The goals kept coming. Bournemouth. Brentford. Brighton. Each game, another strike. By early autumn, Isak sat on six goals from seven Premier League matches, already doubling last season’s meagre return of three in 14. The numbers finally began to match the reputation.
Iraola, though, has been careful to frame the conversation around more than just the scoreboard.
“He's a striker that if we can put him in the right positions, if we can provide him with crosses and good situations, he will score the goals,” he said last weekend, a nod to Isak’s natural instincts in the box.
But the coach quickly broadened the brief. After the match-winning double at Ipswich, he was blunt.
“It is also about other things,” Iraola said. “I will demand other things so we can play well, and if we play well, we are in good positions, the goals will come for him.
“So, I think he has to contribute to the collective.”
That remains the next step. Isak understands the need to defend from the front in Iraola’s system, yet his work-rate still doesn’t always match the manic energy of Lewis Koumas. Cody Gakpo, who has already teed up several of Isak’s strikes this season, joked that the Swede owes him a few in return. The joke hides a truth: Liverpool’s No.9 can still do more in the build-up.
There are signs, though, of a more rounded forward emerging. Bradley Barcola’s arrival has given Isak a partner who sees the same spaces. The Frenchman delivered the assists for crucial goals against Brentford and Brighton, hinting at a partnership that could tilt tight games Liverpool’s way.
Isak is not yet the all-action force he was at Newcastle, the complete centre-forward who bullied defences and stitched play together. But the old, clinical edge is back. Give him a yard, give him a moment, and he still knows how to end a contest.
That, more than anything, is what will bother Mikel Arteta this week.
At Arsenal, the search for a reliable finisher has veered into frustration. Viktor Gyokeres, signed as the more affordable alternative to Isak, has yet to justify the gamble. His first goal of the campaign only arrived in Tuesday’s bruising Carabao Cup defeat to Fleetwood Town, a night that also underlined the erratic finishing of Kai Havertz.
Gyokeres brings power, running, presence. What he doesn’t bring often enough is the cold-blooded conversion rate that separates good strikers from game-changers. He misses more than he scores. Isak does not live in that world.
For all his turbulence over the past year – the strike, the injury, the questions over attitude and adaptation – one thing has stayed intact: his Haaland-like knack for deciding matches with barely a handful of touches. He can be quiet, almost invisible, then suddenly lethal.
Right now, that’s a flaw Arsenal would happily live with. Gyokeres runs and runs, but the net barely ripples. Isak sometimes drifts to the margins of a game, then reappears on the scoresheet.
On Sunday at Anfield, Arteta does not need a reminder of which profile hurts more.
