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The idea of Liverpool signing Alexander Isak remains very much a long shot. Getting the 25-year-old Swedish superstar striker out of Newcastle would be exceptionally difficult and, if it were possible at all, extremely costly.
Yet it is clear Isak is Liverpool’s dream striker signing, and given expectations Darwin Nuñez will depart and rumblings around Luis Diaz that just won’t go away, it’s clear both that the Reds will need a starting-calibre forward and that they should have money for that.
Whether they’ll end up with enough for Isak—or, perhaps more accurately, if they value him enough to pay the fee Newcastle would demand—is another question. But the want is there.
And, as of today, it’s clear the intent is as well following multiple reports that Liverpool have now made an approach to Newcastle to discuss the player. No bid has been made, and no fee has been proposed. But there has been an approach.
Recently, Newcastle have reportedly begun to push hard to sign Hugo Ekitiké from Eintracht Frankfurt. Despite club connected outlets on the Newcastle end insisting the intent was to sign the player to play alongside Isak, that raised eyebrows.
Ekitiké is likely to cost in the region of €100M (£87M) and Newcastle’s system under Eddie Howe does not appear entirely suited to playing a pair of strikers with a similar profile at the same time. As a result, those reports led to plenty of speculation that there might well be news to come on the Isak front.
Now, we’ve had that news. Given Liverpool’s reluctance to make their transfer moves public, it might even be fair to assume that whatever information the club is now allowing to leak reflects a state of play already in the past.
Signing Alexander Isak might still be a long way from a sure thing. It would be a difficult deal to do. It would be an exceptionally costly deal to do, with the floor for any fee likely starting around £120M. But it seems, just maybe, there’s a chance.