General Premier League Thread 2025/2026 - See Post #1 for Mod Note

think you have it wrong and conte told Diego by text while he was in Brazil : thank you for helping us win the title, your services are no longer required. Find a new club.

Player power is at an all time high but players can’t sit out 4 years of a contracts.

Newcastle had a lot of power in their position with Isak. They chose a certain course of action. It’s worked out with a terrible league position and an average CL showing.

Not unless your name is Winston Bogarde, I'm guessing.

Isak didn’t have a good season. If you want to call him a flop though I think that’s a bit dumb.

shearer done his cruciate upon signing for Newcastle. He didn’t end up a flop. Injuries are injuries

for sure. I’ve heard a journalist call him a flop

I think some of your stats are a bit disingenuous /juiced up also.

as someone else said, if next season is riven by injuries and poor performances it’ll be a flop. If he scores 15 in the league it’s acceptable. If he scores 18+ it’ll be good business.

Newcastle’s 120 million is virtually up in smoke with little to show for it.

They can be disingenuous and inaccurate. Disingenuous in how many of those 15/16 games were starts. Inaccurate in how many games was it actually and not guessing.

Minutes per goal would be a more accurate measure of his under performance.

15 in the league would be acceptable to some but you are right that it’s wouldnt be acceptable to all unless it came with 8+ assists. But ideally for Liverpool he would need at least 18 in the league to really be the man.

I worry for Liverpool next season generally. I think that Ekitike injury means they need to sign another no 9 or loan Nicolas Jackson off chelsea for a year

are we converting to euros and dropping the currency symbol to make our points again?

Yeah to add to that, Isak actually only ever started 3 games in a row, in all comps, one time all season.

The 1st of those 3 games was a 45 mins appearance taken off at half time to mind himself. Ekitike ruptured his Achilles in the same half so Isak was forced into starting the next games by default.

Isak simply wasn't fit enough to ever get a run of games together. He always seemed to be trying to get back to fitness, before eventually breaking down again. And then the cycle started again of injury - coming back - broke down.

The only time he ever seemed to look close to any sort of fitness was the run in April which culminated in his scoring against Palace but then didn't start another game after that with 2 separate injuries.

He only played just over 1000 minutes this season, which equates to about 11.5 games worth. 4 goals in that time. Never managed 90 minutes. Fitness record was absolutely nowhere near good enough, which resulted in an average goal return of a goal every 3 games.

but he did **** all in a team that was crap is the context your missing

what did Salah do around the same time? Was he banging them in? Gakpo? Ekitike got zero goals from September until Christmas while Isak was out and just about it got double figures in the league. Chiesa looked a shadow of his former self. How did Wirtz do in an attacking sense? Frimpong?

If everybody was scoring bar Isak I’d agree with you….but the only sparks all we saw all season were a midfielder who got half his goals from direct free kicks and a child who was 16 scoring v Newcastle

The measure of Isak isn’t a season when he was always coming back from injury and even Salah wasn’t hitting half his usual numbers

yeah you were pretty accurate on the bare stats. Starts vs appearances from the bench is important.

He ain’t useless. He was my pick as the best no 9 for 2 seasons at Newcastle. Better than Haaland, maybe injuries will kill him but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Bit of context though. Aside from struggling to stay fit and for a lot of those appearances was just back from one of his injuries, he was playing in a Liverpool side that was man-for-man under-performing. I'll not get into the why's of that but Isak was not set up for success last season. There was zero support or creativity on our wings, our midfield was constantly on the back foot, there was no ambition to move the ball forward. I don't think it's a good season to judge Isak and start throwing the word "flop" around. This coming season it's day 1 for the whole squad IMO. New manager and a pre-season where they can focus and not deal with the death of one of their teammates.

Yeah makes sense. Liverpool buying a Newcastle player. Euros.

This gets to my real issue with Isak though.

Pay 120million and you don't get to use the "things weren't set up for him" card.

United were a basket case for a long time but if we put Kane or Halaand in the team then I would expect them to show something. Not win games themselves but damn sure they wouldn't be as irrelevant as Isak was.

And Isak is supposed to be better than Halaand?

I'm happy to be proven wrong but my prediction is that we have seen the best of Isak.