Alexander Isak has been candid about a difficult opening to his Liverpool career, acknowledging that fitness problems have interrupted his chance to settle. “It has not been optimal,” the 26-year-old told Aftonbladet after another defeat this season.<\/p>\n
Isak has been sidelined for Liverpool\u2019s last four matches with a muscular issue sustained after starting two games in the space of four days. He was fit enough to make the bench against Manchester City last weekend and delivered an uninspiring cameo for Sweden on Saturday, but his condition still requires careful management.<\/p>\n
Across all teams in 2025\u201326 Isak has featured 12 times for club and country, registering eight losses and one goal. For Liverpool specifically he has eight games (18th in the squad), six starts (17th), and 427 minutes (16th), with one goal and one assist (both joint 8th).<\/p>\n
“But when I am on the pitch I do not give myself any excuses. I always want to play my game and perform,” he said. “But yes, it\u2019s hard to be away and not be able to help and contribute.”<\/p>\n
Injury has been a recurring theme in Isak\u2019s career. He missed 38 games across his three seasons at Newcastle, the equivalent of one full Premier League campaign. “It is always frustrating when you are injured. Regardless of whether it is one match or several. It is always worst for the player himself,” he reflected. “There\u2019s not much that\u2019s easy in football. But with experience you learn to deal with things. That\u2019s how it is with injuries and all that. You learn to deal with it and get back in the right way.”<\/p>\n
While Isak works through treatment and careful minutes management, the other forward Liverpool signed this summer has begun to deliver. Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 came off the bench for France to score his first senior international goal and described it as “It\u2019s a childhood dream.” He added, “Every time I get minutes, I try to show my abilities and that I\u2019m there to help the team… I\u2019m happy to be rewarded.”<\/p>\n
Ekitik\u00e9 has been Liverpool\u2019s most prolific scorer so far this season with six goals across all competitions. “It can work, definitely,” he said of a potential partnership with Isak. “We need to train together, play together and it will get better. Sometimes it works like you have this connection with people and it\u2019s more easy, but sometimes it\u2019s spending time on the pitch, getting to know the other guy, what he likes, how he likes to run in the channel, how he likes the ball, in behind [or to] come and play link-up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Isak accepts a difficult Liverpool start as injuries limit him; Ekitik\u00e9 leads with six goals. 25\/26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,1125],"tags":[1081,195],"class_list":["post-4495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-strikers","tag-adaptation","tag-alexander-isak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}