Liverpool will have to wait for rusty Isak to be the best

Arne Slot has spent £125m on a striker who, right now, he admits is not the finest in the global game.

- RICHARD JOLLY SENIOR FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT

This was not Slot showing some buyer’s remorse after the most expensive purchase in the history of English football, or doubting Alexander Isak’s quality. Nor was it an attempt to put a new signing in his place, a 21st-century equivalent of Brian Clough breaking the British transfer record for Trevor Francis and then getting the £1m man to make the tea for the team.

Rather, it reflected the way Isak has been, for many, the wrong kind of striker of late; the player who withdrew his labour to force Newcastle to sell him. Slot is confident there will be no repeat at Anfield. But as Isak prepares for a probable Liverpool debut at Burnley tomorrow, the Dutchman is warning his deadline-day recruit is not ready to play 90 minutes every match. He has only featured for 18, as a substitute for Sweden against Kosovo, since May.

So when Slot was asked if Isak is the game's outstanding centre-forward now, he qualified his answer. “One of them,” he said. “At this moment in time, he isn’t, for the simple reason he has been out for four months. If you write I said he is not the best in the world, you have to add that [bit] or it is not completely fair because he is one of the best in the world. But for him to become the best in the world, the best players in the world win trophies and that is what he and we need to do for him, or someone else, to be seen as the best or one of the best.”