Gary Neville Turns On Isak And Wirtz After Liverpool’s Newcastle Draw

Gary Neville has never been shy about naming names, and after Liverpool needed a stoppage-time penalty to draw 2-2 at Newcastle on the opening weekend of the season, he picked out the two players he believes have to answer for it: Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz.

Speaking on the Gary Neville Podcast, the former Manchester United defender said Liverpool’s forward pair, who cost the club a combined fee north of £200m across the last two transfer windows, had been given a free pass for too long and now need to start delivering.

“We’ve been kind to them”

Isak played the full 90 minutes on his first return to St James’ Park after forcing his exit from Newcastle last year, while Wirtz was substituted just after the hour mark for Alexis Mac Allister. Neither could turn pre-season promise into an opening-day statement in front of a hostile crowd of 52,630 on Tyneside, where Isak was jeered every time he touched the ball.

“The big thing for Liverpool is they’ve got this quarter-of-a-billion-pound front two, Isak and Wirtz and bloody hell, we’ve been kind to them,” Neville said.

“They’re going to have to start playing sooner or later or else, to be fair, they’re going to get quite a lot of criticism. For a start, they’re too nice, and if you’re going to be nice, you’d better be incredible at football.

“I don’t see the tenacity in Wirtz in particular. I just see a nice player moving around the pitch, not really ever looking like he’s busting a gut to do anything.

“Now, that can happen. Sometimes players have that flow about them, but I want to put a rocket up him. I want to put a rocket up him because there’s ability there, there’s talent there, the understanding of his position.

“The biggest disappointment for me today is those two.”

Faith remains, but frustration is building

For all the criticism, Neville was careful to stress he has not given up on either player, pointing to the form both showed before their moves to Anfield as evidence they can still deliver on their price tags.

“I’ve watched them both for 12 months, and I do actually have faith in them,” he said. “I think Isak’s an exceptional player and we’ve seen it.

“I never saw anybody give Gabriel and Saliba or Van Dijk and Konate a tougher time as Isak did when he played at Newcastle in a black and white shirt. I’ve seen him be devastating.

“Now Liverpool fans and his team-mates and coaching staff, they need to see that, because that’s £125m they’ve spent on him.

“And then Wirtz, he needs to sort himself out. Enough’s enough now, we’ve talked about him enough. He’s young and he’s come to a different country, and I’m all for willing him on.

“They have both had a bit of a free ride. Obviously Isak was injured last season but Arne Slot loses his job, and Wirtz has played like that, so let’s be clear, this has got me to start some real focus now.

“I can see a real player there, but can’t keep watching this stuff and he’s been subbed after an hour and they need a goal, but they’re 2-1 down, so no that’s not right.”

Where Neville wants Wirtz to play

Wirtz had impressed as a shadow striker in pre-season, above all in a 3-2 defeat to Monaco a fortnight before the league opener, drifting into forward areas and combining with the front line. At St James’ Park, playing further away from Isak, the 23-year-old struggled to have the same influence, and Neville urged him to return to that role for the rest of the season.

Wirtz has contributed just eight league goal involvements after his nine-figure move from Bayer Leverkusen a year ago, a return Neville believes falls well short of what Liverpool need from him.

“Sometimes I think he moves around too much,” Neville said. “Sometimes I don’t think he’s close enough to his striker, I don’t think he understands where the game’s going to be won and lost.

“When I played football and No 10s sometimes drifted too deep, or too wide, they would get a right rollicking off our manager.

“The game’s not going to be won out there, the game’s not going to be won back there, the game’s going to be won in the final third, in and around the box.

“Combining with your striker, getting crosses in, getting little passes, getting little side passes down the side of the centre-backs, being close enough to your forward so that you can combine with him. And I don’t see him combining with Isak.

“I just feel like Wirtz has got to think about being involved in the build-up less and think about being a second striker. He’s got to think about his output and what he needs to do, and that is feed Isak with little passes down the side of centre-backs. He might only get the ball two or three times in that position in tight games where teams are lying deep.”

Two record fees, two reputations built elsewhere

Neville’s comments land at a sensitive moment for both players. Isak’s move from Newcastle, worth a reported £125m with a further £5m in solidarity payments taking the total to around £130m, was the most expensive transfer in British football history when it was completed last year. He arrived on the back of 23 goals and six assists in 34 Premier League appearances the previous season, Newcastle’s top scorer both in the league and across all competitions.

Wirtz’s own move from Leverkusen, completed in June 2025, carried an equally large price tag, with Liverpool paying £116m, made up of £100m guaranteed and £16m in potential add-ons, to make him a Premier League-record signing at the time and the most expensive departure in Bundesliga history. Both arrived with reputations built on devastating form for their previous clubs.

Liverpool are also working under a new head coach in Andoni Iraola, who replaced Arne Slot this summer after three seasons guiding Bournemouth into European competition for the first time in the club’s history. Iraola’s own pre-season work with Isak and Wirtz had encouraged some optimism inside the club, with the pair linking up well in friendlies including the defeat to Monaco, making Sunday’s underwhelming display an unwelcome start to life under the Spaniard.

A draw that raised more questions than it answered

Liverpool trailed twice at St James’ Park, first to Anthony Elanga inside five minutes and then to Joe Willock’s second-half strike, before Dominik Szoboszlai’s 99th-minute penalty rescued a point deep into stoppage time. It was Cody Gakpo, not Isak or Wirtz, who provided Liverpool’s moment of quality on the day, driving in an equaliser from 20 yards after the break. That imbalance, a front two costing more than £200m combined being outshone by a team-mate playing on the opposite side of the pitch, was central to why Neville singled the pair out rather than focusing on the result itself.

Isak’s afternoon was complicated by the emotion of the occasion. Newcastle fans booed him throughout, still aggrieved by the manner of his exit twelve months on, and he could not find the sharpness or the aura that once made him one of the most feared strikers in the Premier League on that ground. Wirtz, for his part, struggled to find pockets of space against a Newcastle side pressing with real intensity under Matthias Jaissle, and Iraola opted to remove him with a little over half an hour still to play.

Whether Neville’s public challenge acts as a spur or simply adds to the noise around two players already under scrutiny will play out over the coming weeks. What is clear is that patience, even from a pundit who says he still believes in them, is starting to run out.

Isak and Wirtz will get an immediate chance to answer their critics. Liverpool host Nottingham Forest at Anfield the following Saturday, their first home game of the season and a fixture that carries a very different level of expectation for a front two carrying a combined price tag few clubs in the world could match. A home crowd desperate to see the pair click together for the first time will offer a far warmer welcome than the one Isak received on Tyneside, but the standard both are being judged against will not soften.

For now, the numbers tell their own story. Between them, Isak and Wirtz have played a full season and a summer of pre-season friendlies at Anfield without settling into a consistent goalscoring partnership, and Neville’s frustration reflects a wider unease among Liverpool supporters who backed the club’s record spending on the promise of exactly that kind of understanding developing quickly. Iraola, only one game into his own tenure, will be desperate for it to arrive sooner rather than later, and so will the supporters who queued around Anfield last summer to welcome two of the most sought-after attackers in Europe.