Alexander Isak's Journey: From Injury to Impact at Liverpool
Alexander Isak has not been forgiven. Not at Anfield, not beyond it. The memory of that ugly strike at Newcastle, the sulk that forced a sale and delivered him to Liverpool for a nine-figure fee, still lingers. His slow start on Merseyside was met not with patience, but with a cold shrug.
He didn’t help himself. No proper pre-season. No sharpness. The jet-heeled forward who once looked like the only man capable of breathing down Erling Haaland’s neck in England suddenly moved like a player wading through mud.
Then came Tottenham, December 20.
One perfect moment: Florian Wirtz slides a through-ball into space, Isak glides onto it, opens his body and finishes with the kind of icy precision that makes recruitment departments feel very clever about nine-figure cheques. That was the sales pitch, right there.
A split-second later, it was carnage. Micky van de Ven thundered through him, a dreadfully reckless challenge that snapped Isak’s left fibula and his season in two. Liverpool had barely seen their new striker; now they wouldn’t see him again for months.
When he did return, just over three months on, the problems didn’t stop. Muscular issues, one after another, all traced back to that missing pre-season. He looked like a man constantly trying to catch a train that had already left the station.
He needed rhythm. Games. Minutes that flowed into weeks, then into form. Instead, he got something else: a World Cup.
For Isak, it arrived at the perfect time. In North America, he finally strung matches together. Directly involved in four goals, scoring once, but the numbers only told part of the story. He played all but one minute of Sweden’s run to the round of 32. Ninety minutes after ninety minutes, the legs loosened, the timing returned, the confidence crept back.
Even so, when the Premier League season kicked off, doubts clung to him. Was he truly fit? Could he function in Andoni Iraola’s aggressive, high-energy system? The questions didn’t disappear when he scored his first league goal of the 2026-27 campaign in a 2-2 draw with Nottingham Forest on August 29.
“I was at the game,” the former Liverpool defender told GOAL. “Isak, apart from his goal, did absolutely nothing. He was so poor. He didn’t look interested at all.
“And I’m thinking, 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 was the verdict. Soft goal, soft performance, soft mentality.
Then the goals started to come.
The Friday after Forest, Isak walked into Ipswich and walked out with Liverpool’s first win of the season, a ruthless brace in a 2-0 victory. The pressure that had been building around him eased, just a fraction. The following weeks, he kept turning up in the only way that really matters for a No.9: on the scoresheet.
He struck in each of the next three league games, against Bournemouth, Brentford and Brighton. Six goals in seven Premier League matches, after just three in 14 last term. The numbers flipped, the narrative followed.
Iraola, though, has been careful to frame the story in his own way.
“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,” the Liverpool boss said last weekend.
That part is obvious. The demand goes deeper.
“It is also about other things,” Iraola stressed after Isak’s decisive double at Ipswich. “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 is the challenge now. The finishing is back. The rest of the game still needs work.
Isak understands the principle of defending from the front, but the intensity fluctuates. His work-rate can look modest next to Lewis Koumas, whose energy often sets the tone for Liverpool’s press. Cody Gakpo, having laid on several goals for him earlier in the season, joked that the Sweden international owes him a few assists. It wasn’t entirely a joke. Isak could do more in the build-up, more between the lines, more as a link rather than just an executioner.
There are, at least, signs of a partnership forming. Bradley Barcola, a summer arrival, has already supplied crucial passes for Isak’s goals against Brentford and Brighton. Those combinations hint at something more dangerous, a front line with angles and variety, not just a single focal point waiting in the box.
Liverpool still haven’t seen the full, all-round version of the player Newcastle enjoyed: the one who dropped deep, spun in behind, bullied centre-backs and slipped team-mates through on goal. But the old clinical edge is back. The one-touch finishes. The cold decisions in hot moments.
And that, right now, is more than Arsenal can say about their own centre-forwards.
Mikel Arteta went into the season believing Viktor Gyokeres could be the cost-effective answer to Isak. Strong, mobile, relentless – a striker who could batter defences and still deliver at the sharp end. The reality has been far less kind.
Gyokeres only opened his account for the campaign in Tuesday’s humiliating Carabao Cup loss to Fleetwood Town, a night that also underlined the erratic nature of Kai Havertz’s finishing. Arsenal’s attack, so fluid on its best days, looks strangely blunt when it reaches the penalty area.
The Swede from Sporting CP has plenty going for him physically, but he wastes far more chances than he converts. Isak doesn’t. He doesn’t need volume. He needs moments.
For all the turbulence of his first year at Liverpool – the strike at Newcastle, the hostility, the broken leg, the stuttering comeback – he has not lost that Haaland-like quality: the ability to decide a game with two or three touches, almost out of nowhere.
On Sunday at Anfield, Arteta doesn’t need a reminder of that. He might get one anyway.
