In that he doesn’t fit and even Iraola is hinting the team has to/is changing to fit him in.
In terms of being able to score goals not at all. He has an ability to put a goal out of the hat. Quite magical stuff at times.
Sure he doesn’t have the presence on the field that we need at the moment. To compound that those around him are soft as well which surely isn’t helping.
It’s nice to know the penny has finally dropped at the club.
Even if it’s not fair on the other players. More work for them less for the odd man out 
.
I don’t think it’s a problem trying to adjust our system to accommodate Isak (and Ekiteke when he comes back). It’s not like it’s been a well-oiled machine or anything.
The problem with Isak is he doesn’t work hard enough and doesn’t look particularly arsed.
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If it’s not a problem then why bother?
I can not agree with that, the squad is struggling and the extra just makes things more difficult.
At work when you have to ‘cover’ for someone else it is most definitely a problem!
I agree he doesn’t look arsed.
Shit game from him. Our worst player on the pitch. Scored his goal when we were sitting deep and Palace went to attack.
Kind of goals he scored loads for Newcastle. Maybe we should start playing Howie Ball.
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What a load of absolutely bile.
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Criticising the only bloke who’s regularly putting the ball in the net is a bit of a mad one. Much bigger concerns in other areas of the pitch to worry about.
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Agreed in some aspects, hypothetically, do you think we would have been a better team in our pomp with Isak in place of Bobby, alongside Sadio and Mo?
I don’t, scoring is massive and we would be way down on points without his goals, but being involved in other aspects is also part of the teamwork.
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He’s like playing with 10 until he has that one moment where he comes alive and finds the net. Is that enough? Probably for most people. When the goals dry up, it certainly won’t be.
Palace had a lot of joy in possession playing out and overloading our flanks, largely in part to Isak and Gakpo doing fuck all off the ball.
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He just keeps scoring.
He did have a poor game but he got a goal again. Fair enough. He does his job.
Jonathan Northcroft had a really good piece on Isak ahead of the Arsenal match, in which he described the evolution of Isak from a creative centre forward to one that is more of a poacher in Haaland vein. He backed it up with stats and also drew a parallel between the way Iraola is handling him and the way he handled strikers at his previous clubs.
Safe to say, I don’t think we’re ever going to see the Isak that terrorised defences from the deep and left multiple players for dead before scoring or assisting. That said, as long as he’s fit and firing, I can live with that - Firmino has really spolied me, hasn’t he…
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I was actually making a comment to my dad about the Sadio - Bobby - Mo trident absolutely terrorised the opponents as a unit, while our current attacking forwards were having issues stringing their passes to each other (then Barcola crossed a beauty that Wirtz capitalised.)
But isn’t Evanilson basically a Temu Bobby? I wouldn’t have called him a goal-hanger poacher at all, so not sure I get that comparison tbh.
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The way I view Isak, and it being 18months since we signed him, is that I don’t know if we are going to see ‘lift-off’ from him and he becomes a player for us that terrorises the opposing defence for a full 90minutes, OR, we are actually seeing Isak in his pomp right at this moment, and he isn’t going to get any better than what we are witnessing right now…
As for him getting a reputation for being a ‘one chance - one goal’ type of player that every team needs… then surely he is in danger of becoming the most expensive super-sub ever, by dropping him from the starting eleven, and putting him on for the last 20mins, and hope he gets a chance in that timeline.
If we are to play front foot, pressing the opposition to death football under AI, the team cannot carry any ‘freewheeling’ passengers during entirety of any game. If we continue to struggle during the match, and this can be attributed to his, or any other players delivering a sub-par performance in games, then I really think their place within the team becomes at risk.
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I don’t think this is peak Isak yet, pretty confident of that.
Plus, there is still room for improvement, as Iraola often talks about other aspects of his game other than goalscoring (and describing this one as almost a guarantee of goals).
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I’ll try to find the whole article but it went as far as describing how he handled the strikers at Rayo Vallecano. As for Evanilson, I’ve always thought of him as a target man, rather than a false nine but I get your point. He’s probably the weakest Iraola has had in terms of goal output according to that article.
I thought Isak was pretty good yesterday. It certainly wasn’t an ‘anonymous, but scores’ performance.
It’s difficult to find another Firmino. Our attack now is drastically different from Bobby, Salah and Mane, it was balanced how that trio played so our attack now has to find that balance too with the players available. I would not be too bothered if Isak scores 30 goals in a season and does not play like Firmino. It is up to the rest of the team especially the attack and midfield to chip in with goals too. Back then even if Salah was the main scorer, Mane and Firmino constantly were not far behind in terms of goals. It’s up to Cody, Barcola, Rio, Munoz, Wirtz to find their share of goals.