If one moment captured the conflict of Newcastle United’s summer, it was Alexander Isak driving into the training ground and being forced to wait as an ice-cream van drove out.
The ice-creams had been for the children of his team-mates, all part of a family fun day organised by Eddie Howe. By late afternoon, it was out with the sweets and in with the sour.
It is that bitterness, felt by Isak towards the club and for him by supporters, that makes Monday night’s visit of Liverpool the equivalent of tossing a lit match into a fireworks factory. If Newcastle need to remove the Gallowgate End roof to renovate St James’ Park, the incendiary atmosphere that awaits might just begin phase one of the redevelopment.
The irony of it being played out in the absence of the one man who pulled the pin on his and his club’s summer is not lost. Isak, Newcastle’s only senior striker, will be watching at home.
But who does he want to win? The club he wants to play for, or the one he is most likely to still be at come September 2? It is that doubt which makes his reintegration so difficult.
Because of all the words bellowed, whispered, screeched and split over Newcastle this summer, there was one that cut through them all – United. It was delivered, very deliberately, by the head coach. On August 3, in a noisy corridor inside Seoul’s World Cup Stadium, where even the walls were sweating, Howe was cool and calculated. He told me then, rendering all those competing sounds redundant, that Isak had to ‘earn the right’ to be with his team-mates.
Alexander Isak pictured driving out of Newcastle United’s training ground on Wednesday
Isak wants to leave Newcastle to join Liverpool, who are visiting St James’ Park on Monday
‘We are Newcastle United,’ he said. His words could yet find their way onto a Wor Flags display on Monday evening, with the supporter group ready to set the tone when the teams walk out into the colosseum. Howe would no doubt like that – he and his staff value greatly the work of Wor Flags – but his chief concern on that claustrophobic night in South Korea was to send a message around the world – to supporters, to his own players, to would-be targets… to Isak.
As Sir Bobby Robson once said, the name on the back means far less than the badge on the front. For Howe, too, no individual is more important than the collective spirit of a squad who have consistently outperformed the sum of its parts.
When Howe left that night for Seoul’s Incheon International Airport, he joked that a 14-hour flight without Wi-Fi might be a welcome relief. When he landed, all might be OK, a flurry of messages revealing that their transfer targets wanted to join and the clubs were willing sellers. That did not happen, of course.
There has since been progress with the arrival of defender Malick Thiaw and midfielder Jacob Ramsey, but still no striker. To sell Isak, they need two. That is extremely unlikely now, say insiders, coupled with a hardened resolve from the top to tell Isak he must stay. Even if open to the possibility, the board have never wanted to sell the team’s best player.
Nor has Howe. Because they believe, with Isak, the squad is not far away from competing at the very top of the Premier League. That is the frustration, that the player they identified three years ago, the player they have developed, the player who has three years to run on his contract, is the one player who is the missing piece in the jigsaw right now.
I stood with Howe and his backroom team in the middle of a parched training pitch in Seoul last month. At the time, the heat was on, in every sense. But to be there was also a reminder of the talent that resides – be that the coaches who have made full internationals of Anthony Gordon, Lewis Hall, Tino Livramento, Dan Burn and Joelinton, or the players in front of us who defied those temperatures during a session of intensity, energy and character.
Seeing new teenage recruit Park Seung-soo leave Fabian Schar in a heap signalled the end of my observation – they did not need any more headlines!
As the Far East tour went on, the improvement in mood and cohesion on the pitch was noticeable. On the first day, after landing to the story Daily Mail Sport had broken of Isak wanting to leave, the Singaporean sunshine made way for a storm. Howe and his players felt that battering. Their first, jet-lagged session was lethargic.
With Isak’s future a leading subplot on Monday night, the Geordie crowd will be extra rowdy
Star striker Isak pictured with Newcastle manager Eddie Howe during a game back in January
In an elevator at the team hotel, I told Bruno Guimaraes that Arsenal – that weekend’s opponents – had looked very sharp against AC Milan a few days earlier. ‘Oh, f******* hell!’ laughed the captain. In the end, they played well in a 3-2 defeat. But one week on, in Seoul, it felt different. Without Isak, it was interesting to note one drill in which Howe encouraged his midfielders to break the lines, and Guimaraes went clean through on goal more than once.
On the flight to South Korea, the majority of the players watched Happy Gilmore 2, and laughed a lot. Such moments were an escape from what Howe called the ‘constant noise’ around his team, a racket from which he has tried to protect them. On the evidence of last weekend’s goalless draw at Aston Villa, he has done a good job. With Isak – or any striker – Newcastle would have deservedly won that game.
And so that comes back to the feeling of regret felt by Howe, his players and supporters – of Isak, a Newcastle player, refusing to play. They bossed and beat Liverpool in last season’s Carabao Cup final, in which Isak scored. It will, in football terms alone, be far harder to do that without him. Even so, it is because of him, in a roundabout way, that they still stand every chance of beating Liverpool. His actions this summer have guaranteed that a bear pit awaits.
A sour taste lingers on Tyneside, but getting one over on Liverpool would be the sweetest sensation of all.
