Isolated Alexander Isak Epitomizing Liverpool’s Uphill Battle

Liverpool lost its sixth game of the 2025/26 Premier League season on Saturday, falling 3-0 at home to Nottingham Forest. Arne Slot’s team only lost four games in the whole of last season, when it won the league title, showing how much the club’s performances have dipped and how quickly any hopes of a title defense have disappeared.

Numerous issues have contributed to Liverpool’s poor results in the first third of this season, but one of the most concerning is its inability to get the most from its new signings.

Alexander Isak, unfortunately for him, epitomises this. A non-existent pre-season, during which the player was “on strike” while he waited for the transfer from Newcastle to Liverpool to be completed, meant he arrived lacking match fitness and match sharpness.

The club and the player have been playing catch-up ever since, and are yet to get up to speed. A groin injury picked up in a Champions League game against Eintracht Frankfurt in October further stalled that quest for match fitness, with this latest fixture being his first start for his new club since then.

Slot admitted before the game against Nottingham Forest that he is having to give Isak minutes just so he can get to the required level of physical preparedness, and is doing so at the expense of other, more match-ready, players.

“I know that a 100% fit Alexander Isak is a big, big, big plus for this team,” Slot said in his press conference prior to this game.

“But for him to get there, he might need to have minutes where you could argue that another player might be further ahead of him in terms of match fitness.”

It’s far from an ideal situation. Other players are not only in better fitness but also in better form, but Slot is under pressure to get his club’s $170 million record signing into the team as soon as possible.

The manager can’t leave Isak on the bench as he does with others, such as Joe Gomez, Federico Chiesa, and Wataru Endo, who barely get a chance in the first XI. Hugo Ekitike, who has been the best of Liverpool’s new signings this season, also found himself left out so Isak could return to the lineup.

Isak only made two statistically recordable actions in the opening 25 minutes against Forest, and when he did manage to get a couple of involvements, he was understandably rusty. He finished the game having completed only five passes to a teammate.

Though Isak is far from the only issue at the club at this moment in time, the $170 million transfer fee means he will understandably feel much of the heat.

The wide players in Liverpool’s attacking line regularly made inroads into the Nottingham Forest area, but couldn’t find the telling final pass or shot. A combination of a lack of movement in the center and Forest’s compact defensive shape meant none of the balls played into the danger area led to a goal, and when a shot was taken, it was usually blocked.

Alexis Mac Allister had the best chance from such a situation, but saw his shot blocked by Elliot Anderson on the line.

In all of these instances, Isak was not involved. He was either being marked out of the game by center-backs Murillo and Nikola Milenkovic, or not sharp enough to make a move into the limited space available at the right time. He has not yet fit into this Liverpool team, and often looks isolated in attack.

At the moment, as part of the uphill battle Liverpool faces, it feels like Isak will never get fit and firing this season.

“Don’t expect him to play 90 minutes every single game,” Slot said in September. “That’s definitely not going to happen in the upcoming weeks.

“He missed a proper pre-season, I think he missed three or four months of team sessions, so now we have to build him up gradually with us playing so many games and very little training time.

“That’s going to be a challenge but we’ve signed him not only for the upcoming two weeks, we’ve signed him for six years so this is what we have to keep in mind and what the fans have to keep in mind if they see that I take him off at a certain moment or I only bring him in for a small amount of minutes. That’s all for the long-term fitness of the player.”

It’s now November, and the situation has progressed no further. Isak is still trying to build fitness and trying to get minutes under his belt, all the while Liverpool is looking for the kind of boost and momentum that isn’t helped by trying to get an individual player up to speed in isolation.