It is 30 years since Liverpool broke the British transfer record to sign Stan Collymore, a cruiserweight boxer and a brilliant, hugely effective centre-forward with the skills that made him almost unstoppable in his day.
He was a match-winner on his debut against Sheffield Wednesday, scoring a lovely goal without a second thought, and scored another spectacular goal a month later against reigning champions Blackburn Rovers, but, behind the scenes, cracks soon began to appear. From an early stage, he felt out of place at Anfield, treated with indifference in the dressing room and finding his fit awkward in a team whose commitment to pass-and-move football was in stark contrast to the strength he had displayed at Nottingham Forest.
Having played only six games in his Liverpool career, Collymore expressed his disappointment in an interview that was candid even by the unfiltered standards of the time. “I don’t know of any other industry,” he told FourFourTwo magazine, “that would spend £8.5 million on something and then have no plan from day one as to how they would use it.”
By the time the magazine was released two months later, in November 1995, things had gone haywire. He did not add those two early goals, often preferring the experienced Ian Rush and the eccentric Robbie Fowler in attack.
Thirty years later, another British record acquisition marks an even more hallowed start to his Liverpool career. Since that acrimonious, record-breaking deadline day move from Newcastle United, Isak’s only goal has come in a Carabao Cup tie against Southampton. His first four league starts for Liverpool have all ended in defeat, the first time this has happened to a Liverpool player since 1906.
In Saturday’s disappointing 3–0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, he was substituted midway through the second half, having only touched the ball 15 times.
There is no shortage of problems for Arne Slott to address at Liverpool, whose Premier League title defense has collapsed in worrying style with six defeats in its last seven games, but their £125m ($163.7m) centre-forward’s struggles top the list.
The big question here is whether this is a short-term issue, which will be resolved quickly after building up his match fitness after skipping a proper pre-season program to force his departure from Newcastle, or whether there are some deeper issues.
Collymore overcame a difficult start to his Liverpool career by adapting his play, running channels and stretching the defense to create more space for Fowler, with his partnership beginning to flourish.
But it could not last. He became disillusioned and after two seasons he was sold to Aston Villa.
More lasting than his impact on Merseyside was that line about the excesses of football’s transfer market. Often players are signed at huge expense while looking to have less of a fit with the team they are joining – think Fernando Torres (Chelsea, £50m), Paul Pogba (Manchester United, £90m) and Jack Grealish (Manchester City, £100m).
The psychological burden of a large transfer fee may prove heavier than imagined, but there are times when, as Collymore has suggested, clubs appear intent on signing a certain player without seriously considering how to use him.
The Isaac deal did not fall into that category. Liverpool’s recruitment team, led by Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes, is highly respected within the game. He had his eye on Isak long before the club clinched the title last April. This, along with the capture of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen, was the centerpiece of a rebuild designed to take a title-winning team to even higher levels.
All the data, as well as the eye test, told him that Isak and Liverpool were compatible, and that a player who was about to be 26 years old, near the peak of his powers, would lead a successful side.
Instead, Isak joined a team in an up-and-down state, unfit. Whatever his claims of “broken promises” at Newcastle, his refusal to train in preparation for the season has hurt everyone: his former club, himself, Liverpool and the Sweden national team, who finished bottom of their World Cup qualifying group.
Slott spoke openly about the need to find a balance between “what’s best for him as an individual and what’s best for us as a team” in his selection, in his pre-match press conference on Friday.
“I know having Alexander Isak 100 percent fit is a huge achievement,” the Liverpool manager said. “But to get there, he may need minutes where you could argue that another player might be ahead of him in terms of match fitness.”
The second player in question, Hugo Ekitike, had an excellent start to his Liverpool career, scoring five goals in his first eight games and showing the kind of pace, clever movement and goalscoring threat that Isak was supposed to represent. This has led to questions about whether Liverpool even needed Isak, given that both players have a similar technical profile and barring a change in system, there is no intention of playing them together.
The matter is complicated by the devastating impact of Diogo Jota’s death, as it happened at Liverpool this season, with Slot telling reporters in September that the tragedy meant the club was effectively forced to bring in two number 9s.
There was a logic behind the signings of Akitike and Isak, but the pressure to build up the fitness of the latter has made Slott’s task more complicated at a time when he is already struggling with various structural and tactical problems as well as a crisis of confidence. After such a promising start, Ekitike’s momentum has stalled: he has only one goal in his last nine games.
Isak’s selection in the starting line-up against Forest on Saturday seemed doubtful at the time, given that he had only played 29 minutes (in Sweden) since suffering a hamstring injury at Eintracht Frankfurt in October. It looks even worse in retrospect.
This graphic, depicting Liverpool’s passing link-ups on Saturday, reflects a team in which connections are not being made in the forward line. You can find similar graphics relating to Erling Haaland at Manchester City, sometimes in games where he scored two or three goals, but this was not Liverpool’s approach to Isak; He, like Akitike, was regarded as someone who could offer a more reliable goal threat than the late Darwin Núñez, but also offer clever, perceptive, incisive play in the build-up.
This doesn’t seem to be a Collymore situation in terms of not knowing how to play to his strengths. Logically, he appears to fit Liverpool’s needs in a way that Núñez, for all his attractive attributes, did not. On Saturday, there were moments when Isak made perfect runs or when Liverpool tried to play the perfect pass to release him, but the strings were crossed or the execution went a little awry.
This move in the 17th minute was an example. Initially, everything went right, with Isak diving deep to intercept the ball, Nikola Milenkovic snapping on his heels, and then turning to run forward in anticipation of a through ball.
It’s the type of move we’ve seen often at Newcastle, and a pass that Mohamed Salah has played excellently in the past, but on this occasion, the Egyptian overhit the ball and the opportunity was gone.
Seven minutes later, Isak moved down the left wing and, receiving the ball from Gravenberch, beat Milenkovic on the outside before hitting a dangerous low ball which was blocked by Murillo. As soon as the ball came loose, Cody Gakpo would have scored thanks to another excellent block. The other option for Gakpo was to intercept Isak, who had taken up a dangerous position behind him, but again could not get the pass.
In the mitigation of Isak, the performance of Milenkovic and Murillo in the center of the forest defense was excellent. There was an incident in the early stages when Salah moved into space and tried to cut the ball back across the six-yard box, with Isak nowhere in sight. Upon closer inspection, he had simply been stopped by Milenkovic.
But there were other moments when Isak was not in the danger zone when the ball arrived, having dropped deep enough earlier in the move to tie up the play or to free up space beyond him. In the space of 10 seconds in the first half, both Virgil van Dijk and Dominic Szoboszlai expressed frustration at the lack of movement from Liverpool’s front players, which included Salah and Gakpo as well as Isak.
His only real chance came in the 64th minute when Salah fouled him. It was a hard volleyed chance, similar to the one converted by Isak for Newcastle against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final last March. On this occasion he did not make a clean connection.
Was it a matter of match intensity or lack of confidence? It looked like both.
Isak was unlikely to play the full 90 minutes no matter how he performed, but the way things transpired seemed merciful rather than cruel when Slott replaced him with Federico Chiesa five minutes later. Ekitike is now hoping to get his chance to lead the line against PSV in the Champions League on Wednesday.
Isaac was replaced by Federico Chiesa on Saturday (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
For Isaac, the busy schedule means there will be playing time in the coming weeks, but the notion of “getting him into form” was seriously undermined on Saturday. He looked like a traveler and at the moment, Liverpool cannot afford travelers.
There remains hope that, at some point, things will click. After all, he has signed a contract until 2031, so the wisdom or otherwise of his acquisition must be assessed over the course of six years rather than his first eight performances.
But Isak’s failure to get off the ground has – to put it mildly – created a level of pressure and scrutiny that threatens to make life more difficult. At the moment, Isak’s first few months as the Premier League’s most expensive footballer could not have gone worse.
Recruiting is much more sophisticated than in Collymore’s time, based on data and highly detailed analysis, but there are still so many unimaginable and intangible things, so many reasons why spending large amounts of money is fraught with risk.
It’s still early days, but there’s a danger of an Isaac deal becoming a case now.
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