News Focus
- Alexander Isak joined Liverpool for £125m but scored only four goals due to serious injuries.
- The Swedish striker broke his ankle and fibula in December and played just 21% of available minutes.
- Newcastle United dropped to 12th place after losing their main goalscorer and creating fewer clear chances.
- Manager Arne Slot lost his job after Liverpool finished fifth, 25 points behind the champions.
- Liverpool are now speaking with Andoni Iraola to become the new manager.
Footballers often post hopeful messages on social media at this time of year. However, Alexander Isak’s recent comments seemed more significant than most. The Swedish striker has endured a painful first year at Liverpool full of fitness problems.
He wrote on Instagram that he is looking forward to a much better next season. His brilliant goal for Sweden against Norway on Monday suggests he could be right. The 26-year-old scored a wonderful individual goal in the 3-1 defeat in Oslo.
This was not the plan when he joined Liverpool from Newcastle United for £125 million last September. The transfer took a long time to complete. Isak is the most expensive player in Premier League history. But he only scored four goals and missed four months of the season.
So what went wrong? And how did one big transfer damage the season for two huge English clubs?
Isak wanted to leave Newcastle because he was determined to win major trophies. Many people thought Liverpool would win the title again. They signed several top players including Isak, Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez.
However, manager Arne Slot lost his job at the end of the season. This showed how badly Liverpool defended their title. Experts said Liverpool “won” the transfer window. But the team finished fifth, 25 points behind champions Arsenal.
It was a chaotic summer. Isak went on strike to force the move through. Then he suffered many injuries. It was his worst scoring season since 2017-18 at Borussia Dortmund.
A new manager must help Isak score again. Liverpool are talking to former Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola.
Liverpool staff believe the 2025-26 season was just bad luck. Isak only played 21% of the possible minutes in the Premier League. He broke his ankle and fibula badly in December. Later in the season, Liverpool did not want to risk him when he had small fitness problems.
Isak needs teammates to make more chances for him. But he also needs to touch the ball more during matches. For example, against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, he only touched the ball five times in 45 minutes.
Newcastle did not want to sell Isak. At first they refused to sell. Isak trained alone away from the team. But finally they gave in and sold him on the last day of the transfer window.
Newcastle now have a chief executive and a sporting director. Sporting Director Ross Wilson recently talked about “professional” talks when Anthony Gordon moved to Barcelona for £69.3m. This showed how different it was from the Isak situation. Gordon left as a friend. Isak’s exit was painful and shocked the club.
During the Isak problems, manager Eddie Howe said privately that the team still had many successful players. But he knew deep down that losing Isak meant the end of an era for Newcastle.
The team was built around Isak. He scored 27 goals the season before. He scored the winning goal against Liverpool in the 2025 League Cup final. This ended Newcastle’s 70-year wait for a major trophy.
In his last season at Newcastle, he scored 18 goals from only 36 clear chances. This is why Newcastle had the third-best record for converting clear chances in the 2024-25 Premier League. But this number fell badly in the 2025-26 season. They created 90 clear chances but only scored from 31. This was the fifth-worst rate in the league at 34.4%.
Newcastle also lost 27 points from winning positions during the campaign.
Howe tried four different strikers. These included new players Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa. He finally chose William Osula for the last games. “Losing Alex was going to be very difficult for us to find a new team,” Howe said. “But that was the challenge we had to do.”