Iraola Faces Alexander Isak Puzzle as Liverpool Search for Their First Win

Alexander Isak’s smile told its own story on Saturday. Seven touches in the second half, one goal, and a release valve for a player still searching for the trust that carried him to 44 Premier League goals in his final two seasons at Newcastle.

Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Nottingham Forest left new manager Andoni Iraola still waiting for his first win after replacing Arne Slot, and it also left him with a growing question to answer: how does he get the best out of the most expensive striker in Premier League history.

Isak cost Liverpool £125m last summer, a fee no player in English football has ever beaten. The move ended a lengthy tug of war with Newcastle, who fought for months to keep hold of a striker who had become the focal point of everything they did in attack. The expectation that comes with that number is severe, and it has not been matched by his output so far. In an injury-hit first season at Anfield, the Swede scored just three goals in 14 top-flight appearances after arriving with a reputation as one of Europe’s most reliable finishers.

Six touches, one accurate pass, zero shots

Isak looked sharp in pre-season and carried that form into an impressive World Cup with Sweden, but the early signs at Anfield under Iraola have echoed last season’s struggles rather than erased them. For the first 45 minutes against Forest he managed just six touches, one accurate pass, and no shots at all.

Former England goalkeeper Joe Hart, working as a pundit for Match of the Day, said Liverpool have not yet solved how to use their record signing.

“It is clear that Liverpool haven’t worked out how to play with Alexander Isak yet,” Hart said. “At Newcastle everything flowed through him. That was down to a trust thing that they had built up over time. Their midfield knew exactly where he was and they didn’t even need to look up as he’d be there waiting.

“At Liverpool that trust just isn’t there at the moment. No-one is feeling it and he isn’t that central point, which is leading to him looking lost and isolated.”

A second-half goal and a smile that said everything

Liverpool’s first home Premier League game under Iraola was watched from the directors’ box by incoming vice-chairman Amit Bhatia, principal owner John Henry, and sporting director Richard Hughes, the man who led the pursuit of Isak twelve months ago and who has a personal stake in seeing the deal justified. For a spell it looked as though the afternoon might pass without reward for any of them.

Then Isak found space to meet Cody Gakpo’s delivery and levelled the scores, his first goal of the season.

“That’s the job ultimately as a striker, to score goals,” Isak told TNT Sports. “I am very happy to score the first one and hopefully it just keeps coming.”

Former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard called the goal “big,” both for the striker’s own confidence and for the team’s. Hart agreed there was no doubting the quality on show, even as the bigger question about his role stays unresolved.

“Andoni Iraola has some big decisions to make,” Hart said. “Does he base his team round him or does he try to find a different solution within his squad? In my opinion he’s got to commit to what the club have done by investing so heavily in Isak.

“There’s no point signing these players if you aren’t going to use them properly and play to their strengths. There’s no doubting Isak’s quality. They are just at a bit of a crossroads at the moment.”

Iraola’s possession problem

Liverpool’s first two matches of the season have both finished 2-2. The visitors still enjoyed 60 per cent of possession against Newcastle and 70 per cent against Forest, yet came away with only draws. In both games they found themselves behind before fighting back, which has made life harder for a striker who thrived in a counter-attacking Newcastle side built to hit teams on the break.

That tension between style and personnel is not new for Iraola. Last season at Bournemouth, his side won just four of the 19 Premier League games in which they had the majority of the ball, against nine wins in the other 19 matches. Bournemouth, known for counter-pressing and speed in transition, did not win a single game in which they had more than 58.8 per cent possession.

At Liverpool, where the ball will rarely be shared as evenly as it was at Bournemouth, Iraola faces a version of that same puzzle with far higher stakes attached.

“As an attacking force it isn’t flowing for Liverpool,” Hart said. “With the physical nature of the Premier League and with them not 100 per cent sure on what they are doing at the moment, teams are stomping all over them.

“It’s going to take a whole lot of work from Iraola and his staff on the training pitch, but he is a top coach and they have top players.”

The price tag attached to Liverpool’s record signing

In Liverpool’s negotiations for Bradley Barcola this month, the club’s hierarchy were determined not to pay more than the £125m they committed to Isak. When that £123m deal for the France winger is completed in the coming days, Barcola will become only the tenth player in Premier League history to cost a club more than £100m. None of the nine before him have cost as much as Isak did.

Only Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah and Ollie Watkins have scored more Premier League goals than Isak across the seasons following his move to English football, and with Salah no longer at the club, the responsibility for goals now sits more heavily on the Swede than at any point in his career. Hugo Ekitike’s continued absence through injury adds further to that load.

Asked whether he sets personal targets for a season, Isak kept his answer simple.

“Not really. I think every striker wants to score in every game he plays. Obviously that’s difficult but we take each game at a time,” he said.

Judgement deferred, for now

Through Isak’s difficult first campaign at Anfield, the belief inside the club was that he remained a long-term signing whose form should be judged only once he was fully fit. That patience will be tested again this season if Liverpool’s front line continues to misfire while the team searches for its first win of the campaign.

Saturday’s goal was an improvement on his laboured display against Newcastle the previous week, and it arrived at a ground packed with the people who sanctioned the world-record fee in the first place. Isak will know, better than anyone watching from the stands, that one goal in a draw is not the same as being trusted again the way he was at Newcastle.

Iraola’s challenge now is to build a Liverpool team capable of giving him that trust back, and to do it quickly enough that the £125m fee stops being a talking point and starts being justified by results.

A different kind of adjustment

Isak’s move to Liverpool always carried an element of risk beyond the fee itself. At Newcastle he had spent years inside a settled system under Eddie Howe, one built specifically around his movement and his timing of runs in behind opposing defences. Anfield offers no such certainty yet. Iraola only took charge this summer, inheriting a squad shaped for a different manager’s ideas and now trying to reshape it around his own before the season gathers pace.

That kind of transition rarely happens overnight, and Isak is not the only player affected by it. Gakpo’s assist for the equaliser on Saturday was a reminder of the attacking talent still available to Iraola even in a difficult opening two matches, and Liverpool’s underlying numbers, high possession shares in both games, suggest the raw material for a stronger team is there. What remains missing is the connection between that possession and genuine chances created for Isak in the areas where he is most dangerous.

Until that connection returns, moments like Saturday’s goal say more about what could come than what has already been proven. Isak has shown he can still finish when the ball reaches him in the right positions. The question Iraola now has to solve, on the training ground rather than in a press conference, is how to get it there more often, and how quickly he can do it before patience around Anfield starts to run thin.

Gerrard was not finished there. Working as a co-commentator for TNT Sports after the final whistle, the former Liverpool captain said the wider team, not just its record signing, needs a change in temperament. “I think this is a Liverpool team that are a little bit too nice, and that is the reason I said before the game they lack this destroyer,” Gerrard said. It was a pointed assessment from a player who built his own Anfield career on exactly that kind of edge, and it added another layer to a debate that keeps circling back to how Iraola fits his most expensive signing into a team still searching for its identity.