Not long ago, Alexander Isak’s move to Liverpool looked like a cautionary tale in the making. A British transfer record, a slow and increasingly ugly exit from Newcastle, and then one injury after another once he finally arrived on Merseyside. A few months into his first full season at Anfield, he is scoring like Liverpool always hoped he would, and the timing could hardly be better. Arsenal arrive at Anfield on Sunday for a match that could go a long way towards deciding this season’s title race, and nobody needs Isak firing more than Andoni Iraola does right now.
A start that threatened to sour everything
Isak’s switch from Newcastle last summer, reportedly worth around £125 million and completed on deadline day, was never going to be a quiet transfer. He had effectively gone on strike to force the move through, missing almost all of pre season and large parts of training as Newcastle dug in before eventually relenting. Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards, in charge of recruitment at the time, pushed the deal through as part of a wider plan to build around one or two statement signings rather than spread the budget thinly, with Florian Wirtz arriving for similar money around the same time. Edwards left the club in July, with Hughes completing the deal for Bradley Barcola before he too departed Anfield, leaving Iraola to make the new arrivals work without the men who signed them.
What followed was grim. Isak missed four games in October and November with abductor pain, then suffered a leg fracture after a challenge at Tottenham before Christmas that kept him out for 106 days. He returned in May, only to lose nearly three more weeks to further abductor and muscle trouble, and limped through his debut campaign with just three league goals to show for a British record outlay. When Liverpool lost 3-0 at home to Manchester City earlier this season, Isak was missing again, this time with a thigh problem picked up on international duty with Sweden. For a club that had committed so much money and so much faith, the early signs were not encouraging.
The numbers behind a genuine turnaround
Whatever was holding Isak back appears to have shifted. He scored in Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Brighton at Anfield, latching onto a ball from Barcola in the six yard box, and that goal extended a run that now stretches to six goals from seven Premier League appearances this season, second only to Erling Haaland among the division’s strikers. He has scored in every league match Liverpool have won this season, and his current scoring streak is the sort he last managed during an eight match run for Newcastle back in January 2025, the form that persuaded Liverpool to pursue him so relentlessly in the first place.
The underlying numbers back up what the eye suggests. His shots per game have risen from 2.18 to 3.15, his expected goals per 90 minutes have roughly doubled from 0.33 to 0.67, and his goals per 90 of 0.95 trails only Haaland among Premier League centre forwards. He is doing it all on relatively few touches too, just 24.6 a game, suggesting a striker finally being fed the right service rather than one forcing the issue himself.
Iraola has been careful not to make it all about goals. “He’s a massive player for us,” the Liverpool head coach said recently, adding that he judges Isak less on the scoresheet and more on his overall contribution, and that the numbers tend to follow when a striker is fit and feels part of the team. Jamie Carragher has gone further, calling Isak “massively important” to a Liverpool side he believes still lacks genuine goalscoring depth elsewhere, while suggesting supporters have not yet seen the complete version of the player who scored 27 times in 42 games during his best season at Newcastle. With Hugo Ekitike still working his way back from a long term Achilles injury, there is no obvious alternative waiting in the wings if Isak falters again.
Why Sunday is about so much more than three points
Liverpool go into the weekend on a run of five straight wins, but still sit fourth, six points adrift of joint leaders Arsenal and Manchester City. Arsenal travel to Anfield unbeaten in six, though missing Bukayo Saka through a quad injury and without teenage winger Max Dowman, suspended following his Carabao Cup red card against Fleetwood Town, with Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze picking up the slack out wide.
Paul Merson summed up the stakes bluntly this week, arguing that Liverpool simply have to win if they want any part of the title conversation, given a damaging defeat would leave them six points back with the return fixture at the Emirates still to come. An Arsenal win, by contrast, would edge them a long way towards retaining their crown, particularly with a run of fixtures afterwards that includes Champions League trips to face Slavia Prague, Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid, alongside league assignments against Manchester City, Tottenham and Newcastle. There is also a quirk of history working in Liverpool’s favour: Arsenal have not won a league game at Anfield since 2012, and Iraola himself got the better of Mikel Arteta three times in his last four meetings with him while still managing Bournemouth.
None of that guarantees anything on Sunday, and Isak’s fitness record means Liverpool fans will not relax simply because he has looked sharp in recent weeks. But a player who spent much of last season as a symbol of everything that can go wrong with a big money transfer now looks like the man most likely to decide how far Liverpool’s season can stretch. Given everything it took to get him to Anfield in the first place, there would be a certain justice in that.
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