The last thing that Eddie Howe and Newcastle United needed ahead of the start of their Premier League campaign was another fresh storm to navigate.
Monday started the week relatively smoothly, with the Malick Thiaw deal making nice progress, and even rumours of a potential move for Leicester City’s Bilal El Khannouss.
But then Tuesday’s news that Alexander Isak was adamant about never playing for the club again landed, and it’s put the club in perhaps its most uncomfortable position yet in regards to keeping or selling the Swede.
Sky Sports’ Gary Neville has provided quite an interesting take on the saga, and it’s one that plenty of Newcastle fans will agree with…
Speaking online about the Isak and Liverpool drama, Neville believes that Newcastle has only one option this summer: keeping Isak.
It’s an unusually positive attitude towards us from the former Manchester United man, who delivers scathing criticism of Isak and the actions of him and his agent.
“Isak should be angry with his agent. It’s unsavoury. I feel for Eddie Howe.”
Somewhat sympathetically, Neville adds “Isak wants to win trophies and is agitating for a move because he’s got one career. At 25, he’s got five or six good years left.”
But it’s here where Neville believes we have to put our foot down and stop the ongoing situation escalating any further.
“It looks like this guy is downing tools and saying he’s not playing and I don’t think that’s right. Newcastle have to stand strong here, if you’re the club, it sends the wrong message to sell after what has happened.”
“I think they have to keep him for another year because the precedent will be dangerous for Newcastle.”
From a pure quality of football point-of-view, then we’d be mad to sell Isak at this stage of the window. Absolutely integral to our success last season, he’ll be equally as important if we want to make any sort of progress in the Premier League or Champions League over the next nine months.
Coupled with the fact that there’s almost no strikers on the market who can match Isak for numbers and potential, as well as every club in the world being prepared to make us overpay for a forward should we sell Isak, and it’s a bad decision all around.
Neville is particularly right when he says that selling Isak after everything that has happened sets a dangerous precedent: that if a player kicks up enough of a fuss and then refuses to play, then we’ll back down and give the player what they want.
By all accounts, we have done the right thing every step of the way so far: expecting Isak to honour his current contract, plus allowing him to be absent from media duties and the pre-season tour to concentrate on his recovery plus deal with the ongoing transfer situation.
So if we were to sell him now, after the club and the manager’s name have been dragged through the mud over the course of the past fortnight, then what would stop another big star in the future doing the exact same thing, regardless of how loyal and supportive of the club they seem just months prior like Isak appeared to be.