Rebel rebel, an unholy mess: Alexander Isak and a summer of strikes

As July bled into August, he began to double down. When he did return to England, it was in such a manner that his manager, Eddie Howe, felt he could not join up with his teammates. Instead, Isak slips into Newcastle’s training ground on a different schedule to everybody else. He was banned from a barbecue the club had arranged for friends and family.

As things stand, Isak appears to be all-in. He has reportedly made it clear he does not intend to sign a new contract. He has, it has been suggested, told Newcastle he has no wish to be reintegrated into the club’s squad. He moved out of his rented Northumberland home, although that has less to do with his desire to leave than it does the psychological effects of being burgled last year.

The purpose of all of this is plain. Isak has spent the summer caught in what is, in effect, a Mexican standoff, one rooted as much in optics – the battle to control the narrative – as it is sporting ambition or economic logic. Liverpool want to sign him. Newcastle do not want to sell. Liverpool do not want to be gouged. Newcastle do not want to be seen to be bullied.

Though he has not said anything publicly, Isak has made it abundantly clear he wants to play for Liverpool. The problem he has is that his intentions do not count as a decisive factor. His contract has another three years to run. There is nothing he can do to force Newcastle’s hand. For all his fame, talent and status, Isak does not actually have a great deal of leverage.

The same is true of the other players who have found themselves in similar – if slightly less high-profile – situations over the last few weeks. There is nothing remotely new about players downing tools or causing a fuss or otherwise acting up in order to bring a transfer into being. Wilf Mannion went on strike in 1948. George Eastham, a World Cup-winner with England, did the same when Newcastle refused to let him leave at the end of his contract in 1960. Diego Costa, Philippe Coutinho, Dimitar Berbatov and many others have subsequently followed them down that well-trodden path.

Still, it does feel as though this summer has been an unusually fractious one. It is not just Isak: one of his prospective replacements, the Brentford striker Yoane Wissa, has been training apart from the club’s first team squad as he waits for a potential transfer to Newcastle – the irony of this has, of course, been lost on everyone – while Alejandro Garnacho has reportedly told Manchester United he will happily sit out his contract if the club does not agree to sell him to Chelsea.

It is natural that the response from fans, in all three cases, has been to vilify the players involved, characterising them as grasping, self-interested ingrates. A supporter’s primary loyalty, after all, should and will always be to the shirt, not to the individual who happens to be wearing it.

The case of Garnacho, though, rather neatly encapsulates why it can be a little more complicated than that. His situation carries with it an echo of Diego Costa’s at Chelsea in 2016, when the forward was told by Antonio Conte that he would not be required the following season but the club – confusingly, admittedly – seemed oddly reluctant to let him leave.

Garnacho, along with the likes of Antony and Jadon Sancho, has been excluded from first-team training at United; Ruben Amorim, the club’s manager, omitted them from the club’s pre-season tour; he has informed them that their time at Old Trafford is at an end. It hardly feels unreasonable, in that context, that Garnacho might be inclined to wait for the move that is in his interests, rather than those of the club that has scorned him.

United are not the only team operating a “bomb squad;” Chelsea’s is pretty well-stocked, too. Clubs will jettison players once they are no longer flavour of the month without a second glance. Garnacho does not have to look far across Manchester for proof of that.

Kalvin Phillips has never asked to leave Manchester City, but he has still been loaned out for the last two seasons and now finds himself training at the Etihad Campus with a group of players awaiting their own spells away. A new signing, Tijjani Reijnders, has taken his squad number.

Players regard loyalty as something often demanded but rarely shown. It is a cut-throat industry, they know, one in which even the most prominent characters often do not hold the whip-hand. That is why Isak has played every card he has, hoping that he might slowly ratchet up the pressure on Newcastle.

He needs them to believe he will not play for the club again, that their prize asset will lose value; he needs them to worry that the longer the saga drags on, the more prospective signings will notice how hard it can be to get out of St James’s Park.

If they do not work, of course, Isak always has his nuclear option: he can still submit a transfer request. There is a reason that has been held in reserve, used only as a last resort – not only is it formal, public, but it comes at considerable financial cost. It is hard to know for certain without having sight of Isak’s contract, but it might jeopardise not only loyalty bonuses but potentially elements of his signing-on fee, too.

Even that, though, may not be enough. A transfer request is not quite an ace. Isak can play it, but Newcastle do not have to accept. It should not be a surprise, really, that players feel ready to fight and scrap and claw to get what they want: they know that in many ways, the game is stacked against them.

Photograph by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire