Newcastle are prepared to move heaven, earth and the Angel of the North to keep Alexander Isak from the prying hands of Liverpool, but it can backfire.
While they face relegation if Isak is sold, speculation persists that Newcastle might be unable to resist the title-contending overtures of Arsenal and Liverpool.
It seems unlikely either club can afford the requisite sums while persuading Isak to leave a club coming off the back of a trophy-winning, Champions League-qualifying season. But any player thriving outside the Big Six is destined to be linked to those in it.
Newcastle still hold the cards with a full three years left on the contract Isak signed when he joined, but reports of the Magpies considering breaking their wage structure to make him the highest-paid player in the club’s history bring hope and warnings from the past.
Mesut Ozil exposes Arsene Wenger’s wide-eyed Arsenal stance
Arsene Wenger once said his principle on wages was “to pay something that makes sense and is defendable in front of every single player,” adding: “We make exceptions sometimes but they are not maybe so high. If you want to keep making profit you have to respect that.”
He also said that “we have no players on £200,000 a week and I think other clubs will come down to us with financial fair play”.
That remarkably optimistic and hilariously naive philosophy just about held up when Mesut Ozil joined on £140,000 a week eight months later, even if that deal, in the words of the Daily Telegraph at the time, meant Arsenal had ‘broken their wage structure’.
But it was entirely obliterated when the German signed his next contract in January 2018. After some preposterously protracted and public negotiations it was decided that handing Ozil a reported £350,000 a week for three years was the “cheapest option” instead of losing him for nothing that summer and having to replace him.
“On the other side all of our players are well paid. Very well paid. To feel sorry for them – I’m not sure that it’s the most objective assessment,” the manager added, lighting the ticking timebomb he had just carefully planted in a dressing room he would vacate months later.
It is unknown whether Mikel Arteta or the club’s hierarchy agreed whether keeping Ozil was indeed the most economical choice possible when he a) refused to take a pay cut during a global pandemic, b) was paid in full until his departure for Fenerbahce in January 2021 despite not playing for the Gunners since March 2020, and c) still had 90% of his record Arsenal wage paid by the club during his first five months in Turkey.
Liverpool ‘bend’ rather than break their structure for Salah
The line heavily pushed on Florian Wirtz this summer was that while his transfer fee shatters the club record, his incentivised salary will fall in line with the club’s highest earners – or at least those behind the Egyptian king.
As far as basic wages go, Salah is the clear bar-setter at Anfield. Salah became the best-paid player in the club’s history on around £350,000 a week when he extended his deal in 2022, then when those terms were approaching expiration in April 2025 he agreed a rise of up to £480,000 if performance-related bonuses were triggered.
Had that deal been sorted before that season he would have earned a fortune, but those 34 goals and 23 assists in 52 title-winning games provided a decent bargaining position during talks.
“When you have someone as special as Salah the rule that you have to have in place you have to certainly bend them, maybe not necessarily break them but you have to maybe go closer to a position that maybe you don’t want to,” said Carragher at the time, dancing around the fact the Reds quite understandably felt compelled to make a significant exception to keep their best player.
The usual Liverpool transfer exceptionalism notwithstanding, few could argue Liverpool were wrong to make Salah a pay-scale anomaly on either occasion.
Man Utd insult Keane twice before breaking record
“I was a bit annoyed with the first offer put to me,” said Keane in August 1999. “Deep down they must have known it wasn’t something I could sign. Our dealings have to be realistic. I am not naive enough to settle for anything less than a reasonable valuation of my worth.”
A £38,500-a-week deal would have made Keane the highest earner at Man Utd while remaining commensurate to his teammates. But with Juventus and Bayern Munich prepared to throw ludicrous and lucrative figures around in the age of fresh Bosman hysteria, the realisation quickly set in at Old Trafford that they stood to lose a prized asset for nothing.
Keane was free to talk to those clubs and sign a pre-contract from January 1; his new £52,000-a-week Man Utd contract was signed on December 8, putting him on twice as much money as Ballon d’Or runner-up David Beckham mere months after the Treble – and making him the best-paid player in the Premier League.
The BBC said Man Utd had ‘smashed their pay structure’, while The Guardian called it a ‘dismantling’. It also meant Keane was earning considerably more than Sir Alex Ferguson, who ensured after the Wayne Rooney deal fiasco in 2010 to get it in writing that no player at the club could be on a higher wage again.
Keane being Keane and Man Utd being Man Utd, there was still controversy to be enjoyed as the ink dried.
“I’m not one for holding grudges but this was a stupid mistake, a bad public relations exercise and something that should never have happened,” the Irishman said of a letter the club sent to supporters preposterously justifying an increase in ticket prices as a means to help pay Keane’s salary.
Don’t give Sir Jim Ratcliffe any ideas.
Kane shows Isak what not to do with Spurs deal
Before Isak came Kane, the modern standard-bearer for exceptional Premier League forwards operating outside the absolute elite, destined to forever be cast unrequited admiring glances from those within it.
An unhealthy portion of Kane’s career at Spurs was spent linking him with a move to those clubs for unthinkably large sums while he excelled as an individual in a team tapping forlornly against a glass ceiling, and that fate has promptly befallen Isak.
Daniel Levy happened to reach the same ingenious solution Newcastle have stumbled upon: paying something closer to the wages on offer elsewhere. With Kane already sitting alongside Hugo Lloris at the top of the Spurs pay structure that was easier said than done, but perhaps mindful of a potential World Cup-based boom in interest, the England forward secured a 100% pay rise in June 2018.
Kane won the Golden Boot for the semi-finalists in Russia, but a new deal which forced Spurs to ‘rip up their wage policy’ in the words of the Daily Telegraph, had two significant knock-on effects.
It perhaps contributed to Tottenham becoming the first team in Premier League history not to make a single signing across a summer transfer window. Mauricio Pochettino had challenged the hierarchy to be “brave and take risks” but likely had something different in mind.
And that six-year contract with no exit clause effectively trapped Kane when his personal numbers continued to inflate at a time Spurs as a collective inevitably dropped off.
If Isak does exploit the tedious Arsenal and Liverpool speculation his representatives will not make the same mistake – mainly because they have the experience of managing other clients and won’t be distracted by the motorbike and fake tyre tracks on his office floor.