Everybody knows you never go full Van Hooijdonk.
If you really do want to force your way out of a club, you might invent a minor injury to skip a pre-season tour. Or claim you are too ill, like Raheem Sterling forcing his way out of Liverpool to move to Manchester City in 2015.
If it comes to it, you could try the Dimitar Berbatov mini-sulk of 2008, when he missed the first game of the season having made no secret of his desire to leave Tottenham Hotspur for Manchester United.
Berbatov got his move – United finally stumping up the £30m asking price – but not before ending his exile.
Alexander Isak, we are told, has explained to Newcastle United he will never play for them again.
After a summer of smoke and mirrors and leaks, only a few days before Newcastle’s opening game of the season against Aston Villa, Isak has started a delicate game of chicken.
Still, Newcastle need only glance at the annals of football history, littered with grumpy stars who tried to take on their clubs, to know there is no reason to swerve first.
Sir Alex Ferguson once had to calm a furious Cristiano Ronaldo after telling the player he would not be allowed to leave for Real Madrid in the summer of 2008.
It irked Ferguson, recounting the story in his autobiography, that Ramon Calderon, the Real Madrid president, had come out publicly and said that Ronaldo would be a Real Madrid player.
To head the issue off and maintain his pride, Ferguson met Ronaldo in Portugal at the house of his assistant, Carlos Queiroz, to break it to him.
“You can’t go this year, not after the way Calderon has approached this issue,” Ferguson said.
“I know you want to go to Real Madrid. But I’d rather shoot you than sell you to that guy now.
“I don’t care if you have to sit in the stands. I know it won’t come to that, but I just have to tell you I will not let you leave this year.”
Sir Alex Ferguson blocked Cristiano Ronaldo’s move to Real Madrid in 2008 (Photo: Getty)
He agreed to let Ronaldo leave the following summer, if they received a record bid.
Ronaldo got on with life, won the Premier League and the League Cup, was awarded his first Ballon d’Or that December, then got his move.
Indeed, Ferguson found himself in another tricky position two years later, when Wayne Rooney, another player he signed as a teenager and turned into a superstar, released a statement expressing his intention to leave.
United settled that one by offering a giant new contract the next day. Rooney signed it, and they won the title that season.
Brentford, meanwhile, held firm when Ivan Toney made it clear he wanted to leave the club, displaying cojones of steel by allowing him to reach the final year of his contract before selling him for £40m to Al Ahli.
Even Steven Gerrard had a rather explosive wobble at Liverpool in the summer of 2005. Only a few weeks after Liverpool won the Champions League, Chelsea, Premier League champions under red hot manager Jose Mourinho, bid £32m.
Liverpool rejected it, and were surprised that Gerrard handed in a transfer request – “a hand grenade rolled into the Liverpool boardroom”, as he put it in his autobiography.
Gerrard eventually backed down, probably swayed, somewhat, by the furious Liverpool fans who turned up at the training ground to protest and burned replica shirts with his name on the back.
In fact, it is hard to recall a player who outright refused to play for a club until they were sold and followed through on the threat, beyond Pierre van Hooijdonk.
The Dutchman infamously returned from the 1998 World Cup believing Nottingham Forest would allow him to leave.
He had been top scorer the previous season, providing the goals that helped Forest to promotion into the Premier League, and felt he deserved a bigger club.
Forest stood firm. Van Hooijdonk holed up in the Netherlands for the first 11 games of the season, before finally realising it was doing more damage to his career than to Forest.
His first goal back was in a draw with Derby County, which his team-mates didn’t celebrate. He scored five more times. Forest finished bottom.
An entirely different set of circumstances to Isak, but if the Swede follows through on the threat for any length of time, he will hurt the most.
And let’s play this scenario out to the extreme. Newcastle don’t sell. Isak doesn’t play. The World Cup is 10 months away.
Will he be in any shape to play Sweden’s World Cup qualifying games in a winnable group – certainly winnable with Isak in your side – alongside Switzerland, Slovenia and Kosovo?
Imagine being the striker who ruins his country’s chances of qualifying for the World Cup.
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Isak has been on the pathway to Premier League greatness since joining Newcastle three years ago. The wrong choice now will lead him in a murky direction.
Van Hooijdonk admitted, many years later after his career was finished, that he regretted the decision to go AWOL from Forest. He feels that it is the only thing people in England remember about him – that his behaviour forever clouded opinions of him, wherever he went.
Even Van Hooijdonk conceded, eventually, that you never go full Van Hooijdonk.