Newcastle United made very clear they did not want to sell Alexander Isak, but he has now reportedly made clear his desire to leave the club.
This feels like an inflection point for Newcastle. They want to truly establish themselves as part of English football’s elite and join Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal in expecting Champions League football at the very least, and winning the Premier League at best.
To get there, they need to handle situations like this with extreme care. There are obvious downsides to losing your best players, and Newcastle have higher aspirations than their current station alongside Tottenham, Aston Villa and Brighton.
Newcastle United have history lessons to learn from Liverpool and Arsenal
Those clubs will generally be in the European picture, with the odd good year and the odd bad year here and there, but are ultimately stuck in a state of constant squad transition and promises of bread tomorrow.
At the same time, it is not as simple as saying that Newcastle should simply refuse to sell Isak on point of principle.
Even those who have long been seated at football’s top tables are not immune to players wanting to leave for one reason or another – see, for example, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s departure for Real Madrid.
At every level, it is almost universally acknowledged that there is little to be gained from forcing players to stay at the club. Unhappy staff are rarely productive, after all, and unproductive players eat up wages and lose resale value.
In those circumstances, better to accept the situation and sell while the valuation is high, rather than risk things spiralling out of control. Selling well is an art the most successful clubs manage to pull off, and that’s especially true in these days of tighter spending safeguards, and Profit and Sustainability rules (PSR).
Clubs stray from that principle at their peril. It was a trap that Arsenal fell into in the latter days of Arsène Wenger’s reign, and it took years for them to rebuild themselves from mid-table mediocrity into Champions League regulars again under Mikel Arteta.
Arsenal had previously understood well that the likes of Barcelona and a newly-minted Chelsea and then Manchester City would prove irresistible to some of their star players, and worked within the system; simply cash in and replace.
But after Robin van Persie left the club to immediately win the league title with Manchester United, they grew more stubborn about refusing to let their stars go to potential rivals. Not only did results suffer, but the likes of Mesut Özil, Santi Cazorla, Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey all ended up leaving for nothing.
Özil’s situation was particularly excruciating and drawn-out and hurt the club’s reputation. Footballers talk to one another, and nobody wants to end up at a club where they feel they will be held hostage by their contracts if some dream move comes along.
Liverpool, on the other hand, have excelled at selling at the right moments. Alexander-Arnold running down his contract is a rare example of them being unable to capitalise at the right times.
A decade ago they cashed in on Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling and used that money to rebuild something bigger and better – even if it took a little bit of time and the arrival of Jurgen Klopp to make that happen.
Newcastle will be hoping they are at a more advanced stage of their life cycle than Liverpool were in the late Brendan Rodgers period.
Klopp’s arrival to oversee a patchy squad precipitated a year or two of the club throwing transfers at the wall to see what stuck; Newcastle already have a strong and reliable squad that merely needs a few more quality additions to take them to the next level.
A big-money Isak sale could be a blessing in disguise if Newcastle were able to spend the proceeds wisely and bring more balance to the squad. The season before last, they were free-scoring but conceded too many goals.
Last term, their defensive record was better, on the whole, but at the cost of scoring fewer goals.
Even then, they were streaky, and there were occasions when Eddie Howe’s side looked all too soft: Fulham, Brentford, Bournemouth, an out-of-sorts Manchester City and rivals Aston Villa all put three or four goals past them over the course of the season.
That is, perhaps, symptomatic of Newcastle having been over-reliant on the talismanic Isak at times. To use an overly simplistic example, if Newcastle can get, say, £120m for his services, they could sign an acceptably good £60m replacement and two well-scouted £30m players who help them to find more solidity and consistency.
Losing a key player is always painful in the moment – but sometimes, it’s just what a team needs to accelerate themselves into the next stage of their development.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(471x244:473x246)/CNN-New-Years-Eve-with-Anderson-Cooper-123124-9952e5f00fc1425f87113ba2bfb97b29.jpg "Anderson Cooper Says He Once ‘Hated’ New Year’s Eve While Co-Hosting CNN Broadcast")
