How the dressing room responded to the striker's controversial Liverpool move
The message dropped in the Newcastle players’ WhatsApp group chat and finally, after months of drama and intrigue, they knew Alexander Isak was gone.
Isak confirmed he was off to Liverpool and thanked them for the memories – the Champions League nights and the League Cup triumph. The players responded one by one.
Given he had probably not seen any of them all summer, refusing to participate to ensure Newcastle sold him, you could understand if at least some were not overly pleased.
Were they all good messages?
“Yeah, of course, yeah!” Dan Burn says, after recalling the story.
Interesting, because the narrative emanating from Tyneside over the summer is one of fire and fury that Isak, with three years remaining on his contract, withdrew from pre-season then refused to play for the club to force through a transfer to the Premier League champions. The picture painted of a player who plummeted from hero to hated.
But Burn, who considers Isak a good friend, suggests the players are more pragmatic about the situation.
“It’s only natural \[there’s frustration\],” Burn says.
“Alex is probably one of the best three strikers in the world at the moment, and as a Newcastle fan personally, you’d love him to want to stay. But I know that’s football, and there’s players who’ve come and gone from Newcastle before.”
Losing a player of that calibre – scorer of 54 Premier League goals in three seasons, 23 in the last campaign – would appear, from the outside at least, to deliver a body blow to any club. But especially one desperately fighting its way to becoming a regular Champions League qualifier, and, eventually, a Premier League title challenger.
Newcastle have reinvested the Isak money (Photo: Getty)
Burn explains, however, the various reasons why it has, in his opinion, put Newcastle in a better place. A large portion of the £125m Isak fee was spent on forwards Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa. Woltemade the younger back-up for the longer term, Wissa the experienced Premier League goal scorer to replace Isak’s goals immediately.
Anthony Elanga and Jacob Ramsey also represent significant strengthening.
“If you look at the whole of our transfer window, we’ve bought well, got players in the positions that we wanted to get them in,” Burn says.
“That’s the thing that we probably need to learn from the last time we were in the Champions League, we probably didn’t have that depth that we needed and suffered for it. So I think the club’s invested well.
“Alex is my mate at the end of the day, so it was a tough situation, but I’m glad that we’re getting a good return on a player that we’ve had, and he’s getting the move that he wanted.
“If we look at our transfer window, it’s been pretty good: we’ve got good players now, depth in every position, and a lot to look forward to.”
The other silver lining around what many consider a dark cloud that hung over Newcastle for months and ruined the summer is, in Burn’s view, that the saga has tightened the group. There is, after all, a certain unifying quality in everyone suggesting your team will fall apart when one player leaves.
“It brought us closer, really,” Burn says. “I think it can be frustrating at times, because everything was so positive last season, so that took a little bit of a shine off.”
Burn understands, perhaps more than most established Premier League players and England internationals, the finite lifespan of a football career. Burn came up through non-league football, didn’t become a regular in the Premier League until his mid-20s, didn’t earn a first England call up until he was 32.
“I’m not silly, I’ve been around football a long time now, and people have short careers, and they want to max out absolutely everything they can, so there’s no hard feelings from me. We’ve got two good players in that position now, which will hopefully fill up the goals that we’ve lost.”
He adds: “There’s no animosity. As a Newcastle fan myself, you know what Newcastle fans are like, we’re protective of our club and city and you want players who want to be there for Newcastle and don’t want to naively think there is anywhere else to go apart from playing for Newcastle.
“So I understand why our fans were frustrated. I’ve been in the game long enough to know what goes on and wish him all the best. Apart from when we play Liverpool.”