![\"Alexander](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1_GettyImages-2236985400.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAlexander Isak has struggled since his British transfer record move to Liverpool<\/p>\n
Former Newcastle United midfielder Jeff Hendrick claims he wouldn’t be surprised if his old club tried to sabotage the start of Alexander Isak’s Liverpool career.<\/a><\/p>\n Isak’s on-off move was the biggest transfer saga of the summer. The Swedish striker went on strike at Newcastle in a bid to force a move to Anfield.<\/p>\n The deal was finally completed on deadline day, with Newcastle accepting a fee of around \u00a3130m from Liverpool for the player. It was a British record transfer.<\/p>\n Isak, however, has struggled on his arrival at Anfield. The forward only has one goal to his game – a Carabao Cup strike – and has looked rusty and off the pace, as he works himself back to full fitness.<\/p>\n It was a situation Newcastle coaches predicted could happen<\/a> once Isak went on strike. His disrupted pre-season meant he didn’t play in any of the fixtures and he was forced to train alone away from the rest of the squad.<\/p>\n It meant his fitness and sharpness suffered and Hendrick – who was omitted from several Newcastle first-team squads after falling down the pecking order following his 2020 arrival – says he wouldn’t be surprised if Newcastle deliberately dragged out the transfer so that the player turned up on Merseyside unfit.<\/p>\n “If his situation was a year earlier, I would have crossed paths with him in the bomb squad,” Hendrick told BoyleSports<\/a>. “Unfortunately, I didn’t. I was probably more surprised by how long it drew out publicly, two months.<\/p>\n “Who knows, before they broke up for summer, there was talk of stuff being guaranteed behind closed doors. It must have been the case for him to push it that much.<\/p>\n “I think it was always going to happen, even a month out. It was inevitable, there couldn’t be a U-turn. The fans weren’t happy. Then it was more Newcastle dragging it out, waiting to line up the player they wanted.<\/p>\n “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little bit of tactics involved: \u2018Let’s send him to Liverpool not fit. He won’t have had a proper pre-season. They’re going to have to get him fit. They’ve got a backlog of games.\u2019<\/p>\n “Because if you look at it, he’s obviously played a couple of games, but he’s not an Alexander Isak of \u00a3120million. So it’s probably clever from them.”<\/p>\n Here at ChronicleLive, we are dedicated to bringing you the best Newcastle United<\/a> coverage and analysis.<\/p>\n Make sure you don’t miss out on the latest NUFC news by joining our free WhatsApp group. You can get all the breaking news and best analysis sent straight to your phone by clicking here<\/a> to subscribe.<\/p>\n You can also subscribe to our free newsletter service. Click here<\/a> to be sent all the day’s biggest stories.<\/p>\n And, finally, if you would rather listen to our expert analysis then make sure to check out our Everything is Black and White podcast. Our shows are available on all podcast platforms, including Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>, and you can also watch along on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Isak has struggled since his British transfer record move to Liverpool Former Newcastle United midfielder Jeff Hendrick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[12033,64,63,596,33524,85],"class_list":["post-198221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-alexander-isak","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-newcastle-united-fc-transfer-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}