Photo by Glyn KIRK / AFP via Getty Images
Photo by Glyn KIRK / AFP via Getty Images
Alexander Isak finally feels like a Liverpool player after starting the season in good goalscoring form.
The Swede sits behind only Erling Haaland in the Premier League scoring charts, having hit four goals from the opening five matches of the campaign.
But while most supporters have been happy with Isak and his much-improved return, Liverpool legend Steve Nicol has claimed that aside from finding the net, the £125m signing has actually been ‘horrible’ in every other area of his game.
Isak offering nothing apart from goals – Nicol
Before he found the net – and won the game – against Bournemouth on Sunday, it is fair to say that Isak was not playing well. He had wildly overhit a simple cross minutes before, and it felt like one of those games where things just would not come off for him.
After he swept home Cody Gakpo’s ricocheted cross, all of that was forgotten, however. He is there to score goals after all, and if he delivered that exact same performance every single week for the Reds, nobody at all would be complaining.
Nobody, it seems, apart from Nicol, who spoke on ESPN FC this week to claim that Isak was offering nothing at all in terms of hold-up and link-up play and had actually been a poor performer for Liverpool.
“Isak’s got four goals in five games. Normally, if you look at that on a sheet of paper you go ‘that’s alright, that’s what they signed him for, he’s scoring goals.’ But other than those four goals – which I know, it’s really important – he’s been horrible,” he said.
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“His hold-up play, his link-up play. Every other facet of his game has just been bang average, but he’s got four in five.”
Nicol urges Iraola to drop Wirtz
As usual, Nicol has not held back with his opinions on this version of Liverpool. And as the knives sharpen elsewhere for Florian Wirtz, the Scot has also been declaring his unhappiness with the Reds’ misfiring No. 7.
Nicol called for Wirtz to be dropped ahead of the win over Bournemouth, and he has now once again urged Andoni Iraola to take the German out of the team and move Dominik Szoboszlai into a more advanced role.
“In order for it to change, the coach has got to change something,” he said. “How many times do you keep trying the same thing, the same thing, the same thing and it’s not working. Eventually you’ve got to figure out that you need to change something. Right now, I think it’s very obvious to most people, the one change for me would be Wirtz. Get him on the bench.
“We’re seeing nothing from Wirtz and I think it’ll be better for Liverpool going forward if Szoboszlai was further up the field. Regardless of who the opposition is, if he picks the ball up anywhere within 35 yards between him and the goal, the opposition are going to have to come out and close him down.
“You’re losing out on that when you’re getting nothing from Wirtz and Szoboszlai is deeper. He works his socks off but isn’t the best defensive midfielder on the planet.”