Enough glimpses within the very short acclimatization time to see why Liverpool wanted to pay this much.
Isak should be a VVD / Alisson level transfer.
The other two were well established as being on the top lists on their respective positions before we pulled the gun on them. Same with Isak. Heās clearly in the top 5 CFs currently playing. Probably only Alvarez comes close.
The balls just sticks to him when he receives it in traffic, doesnāt it? Beautiful to watch. I swear a couple times Wirtz was just seeing if he could over hit a pass to Isakās feet (and found out he couldnāt).
Dunno what Sky/ITV were trying to make out showing that exact clip of him evidently doing warm downs at half time.
Think we are seeing why striking and having no pre-season isnāt recommended.
Looks so rusty its unreal. OK, we arenāt playing well which isnāt helping but he needs to get up to speed ASAP
To be fair, he needs to actually get the ball passed to him in attacking areas.
Strikers feed off scraps in this teamās set-up. For all his faults it was the same for Nunez.
Weāve paid over Ā£100 million for this fella and heāll spend most of his time outside the box looking to get involved.
Maybe we now have to change the way we play and the focus of our attack as under Jurgen and last year our goal attacking wise was to get our wide players in to positions to score.
Now with an aging Mo and 2 very good CFās we have to devise a way of playing to get them on the ball in areas that will hurt the opposition.
I watched the game Sweden - Switzerland the other night. Itās a bit like with Wirtz right now: you can see the potential. Heās incredibly quick for such a tall player, and can make a decisive pass or a run at any time, and you can also see that heās the type of players who can turn a game in a flash-second. He hit the post during the first half, and Switzerland were lucky on that occasion.
However, his quality appeared only in minuscule glimpses. The rest of the time, he was anonymous, just like his team-mate Gyokeres and all the others. To be fair, the whole Swedish team lacked fighting spirit, or mental steel. They looked soft.
They play Kosovo at home tonight, their last chance to qualify from that group. Lose or even draw this game, and they are out.
Sweden lose at home against Kosovo. Isak wasnāt up to it, just like every Swedish player. Kosovo were far better than them tonight.
Do you think he knows itās part of his job toā¦you knowā¦maybe find a way for that to happen?
Itās getting difficult to tell these days.
Comparisons to Halaand are not great. Isak has always been viewed as an all around attacking threat, not someone who lives and dies by the chances his team mates create for him. You cannot explain away his lack of involvement with a focus on the expected difficulty of creating chances for him. If that is how heās being pigeon holed then weāre losing a good 50% of what has made him so special
I think the issue is that our attack is so incongruous that itās undermining for everyone.
Our attack almost always pivots between the wings. Which isnāt necessarily a bad thing, as more width should give Isak and Wirtz and Ektitke space to operate centrally by stretching the defense.
The issue here is that we have Salah and Gakpo, two ball-carrying wingers who donāt maintain width and like to cut inside into the exact channels that Isak and Wirtz should be exploiting. Which only clogs the middle with players on both sides and gives no one space to operate.
Additionally, because we are shifting from one wing to another, Isak never sees the ball in an attacking area where he can create. So heās often just a bystander, with CBs free to bookend him. On top of that, weāre not getting effective crosses into the box, which he exploited well at Newcastle. Again, because our wingers are cutting inside instead of feeding him the ball or looking at one of the overlap runs that go to nowhere.
It would be nice if Salah - who is a gifted passer - would focus more on service than on cutting onto his left foot. But Salah has always seen himself as a target man.
We have always done this though. Throughout most of Kloppās time anytime we went into a funk the conversation would generally veer towards how Mo was being stuck out on the wing too much and not coming inside to the positions where he normally hurts teams. What made that work was the timing, and the interchanging. Some of Isakās best moments so far has been pulled out onto the left into space Cody left and got the ball into his feet there which harkens back to when we have a functioning front line, but it just isnt happening much.
Interesting quotes, considering at times some weird decisions who he started in attackā¦
The last example being the Forest game. Circumstance at RB ādictatingā playing Szobo starting there, Jones in and playing a midfield shape without a #10 and then he starts Isak and we connect almost nothing through the centre. The only positivity coming from our wingers that day.
If he wanted more involvement from our striker on a day like that, Ekitike wouldāve been a better fit.
The truth will be somewhere in the middle, when Isak gets fit and firing and if he merits becoming āthe manā here. Itās connected to whatever weāre gonna build out of this attack long term.
Heās certainly an able footballer, someone who can receive, lay off, work the channels, but his forte is in the most dangerous area. Heās got that ability of turning a minimal amount of touches into dangerous shots and goals. Gets shots off with ease, thatās the thing I love the most about him, along seemingly having a very cold head approach. You could see a little bit of that in some training clips, he doesnāt have to be 100% fit and in form to display that sniper skill.
But I donāt expect from him things we saw from Firmino or what weāre seeing and what Ekitike might blossom into. He doesnāt need to do that. Ekitike and Isak do have more than one similarity, I posted a graph in the attack thread before the end of the season, but itās clear if theyāre together who will be the more second striker and who will be the main striker. Isakās been brought in to be the latter. Whether he succeeds, who knows.
Hopefully Isak gets there soon, because apart from his well taken goal against West Ham, in his all round game it was still pretty weak.