Alexander Isak goes Full Kane in Liverpool transfer saga

The Alexander Isak Transfer Saga is now officially scaling heights the like of which we may never see again.

Isak – by now a player we are contractually obliged to refer to as ‘the wantaway striker’, although in opinion-led pieces ‘the poorly-advised Swede’ is also acceptable – has somehow managed to go both Full Kane and Full Berahino in the space of about three days.

And for an extra layer of entertainment, there is the response to all this from those of a Liverpool persuasion. We’re not having a go at Liverpool fans specifically here; all football fans are one-eyed hypocrites to some extent or other, for whom many of whom the founding principle of any discussion of any issue around the sport is a Homer Simpson-esque ‘But when we do it, it’s cute’.

But it is Liverpool fans currently showing both cheeks of their arse while performing some startling mental gymnastics that allows them to paint Trent Alexander-Arnold as a legacy-ruining disgrace for wanting to join the biggest club in the world having fulfilled the terms of his contract and Alexander Isak a poor helpless victim left with no choice but to go on strike and refuse to honour his contract after being held hostage by evil Newcastle who are so meanly standing in his way when he wants to move to a rival in the same league.

After the frankly drab and dreary sagas of this summer – your Mbeumos, your Gyokereses – let’s all give praise for such an enjoyably messy and shambolic one landing directly in our laps at this late stage.

The fact it’s happening so late is all part of the fun, too, of course. Like with Kane, Isak has realised to his apparent horror really quite late in the window that the club with whom he signed a six-year contract that still has three years left to run don’t feel particularly keen to just let him leave on anyone’s terms but their own.

Isak’s agents aren’t quite Charlie Kane-level out of their depth here, but they also don’t have the mitigation that sometimes we can all do silly things where family is concerned.

Isak isn’t their only major client and while we’re only speculating here, we strongly suspect they haven’t (yet) had a motorbike and all fake tyre tracks installed in their office, but they don’t have anyone else close to the Swede’s market value and desirability.

It would be fair to conclude that while, sure, we must give them some credit for thus far managing not to scupper the deal entirely by giving away all manner of exaggerated details while attempting to impress a girl who turns out to be The Sun’s showbiz editor at a wedding , they also are not the most experienced at extricating their players from suddenly awkward contracts via the negotiation of nine-figure transfer fees.

We’ll know more clearly where we stand if Isak’s next step is to take a friendly stroll around a golf course with Gary Neville.

The Kane similarities – the six-year contract with a club that turns out to be quite silly, the late dawning realisation that no useful escape clause is present, the even later dawning realisation that said silly club actually will do this on their terms no matter how many toys vacate the pram – are all great fun. We honestly didn’t think we’d see the like again after the cautionary tale that was summer 2021, ending as it did with Kane stuck and forced into a humiliating rehabilitation and an unpleasant situation all round that, ultimately, didn’t really help anyone apart from, eventually, Bayern Munich.

Yet here we are. Another world-class striker. Another aspiring striver of a club who don’t really want to give their best player to the champions they still harbour long-term if increasingly forlorn-looking ambitions to one day replace. Another huff. Another bout of hypocrisy and whataboutery.

Even the same desperate questions about whether the player can buy himself out of the contract unilaterally (short answer: yes, with an if; long answer: no with a but).

That alone would have been enough to get us through this last barren week before the Barclays returns and brings with it the blessed relief of being able to just get back to the proper real football business of squabbling about VAR and seeing which referees are definitely corrupt this season and in whose favour and the very balanced and definitely-not-mental reaction from both sides when Man United burgle a 1-0 win over Arsenal in an unwatchable abomination of a game on Sunday afternoon.

But Isak had more. He is both the hero we need and the hero we deserve, thanks to these latest reports that he has left his house in Newcastle and moved in to one in Liverpool. Do we know these reports are definitely true? We do not. But sometimes the idea is funny enough that you don’t need to go looking too hard for the truth.

Thank you, Alexander. Thank you, Liverpool. Thanks you, Newcastle. All possible outcomes from here are now also funny, although our preference is as ever for the one that requires the most grovelling and humiliation, because we are sickos.

That outcome is, as always, Isak ending up forced to stay put and George Costanza his way back into Newcastle’s team like the last month hasn’t happened. But that’s merely the best of several good outcomes. As long as there isn’t a swift resolution to spoil everyone’s fun, and the chance of that seems delightfully slim at this stage, we can all wallow a while longer in the grubbiness of it all.

Source: Football365.com | Read Full Story…