Arne Slot has defended Alexander Isak over his decision to go on strike in order to force a move away from Newcastle and insisted the same situation would never arise at Liverpool because they would sell any player who made it clear they wanted to leave the club.<\/p>\n
Isak secured a transfer from St James\u2019 Park to Anfield on deadline day for a British record \u00a3125million (\u20ac145m) fee and could make his debut for the Premier League champions at Burnley on Sunday, albeit he is unlikely to start having missed pre-season and the first three games of the season after refusing to train while still at Newcastle, claiming promises made to him there had been \u201cbroken\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked if Isak\u2019s decision to go on strike reflects badly on the 26-year-old, Slot said: \u201cNo, I just look at the club. It\u2019s not necessary at our club, because we also trade players. If a player wants to leave and we get the right money for him, this club has shown so many years now that we then sell.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can just keep on training here \u2013 Lucho [Luis D\u00edaz] and Harvey [Elliott] get their transfers, Tyler Morton gets his transfer, all these players, I can come up with eight, nine, 10 I think in the last window, that just conduct themselves in the best possible way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Isak featured for only 18 minutes during the international break due to his lack of match fitness. He had spent time training alone at former club Real Sociedad during the summer but did not feature during that time. Slot admitted it will take the player time to get up to speed but has no doubt he will eventually display his talents for Liverpool. \u201cHe is one of the best in the world,\u201d said the head coach. \u201cBut for him to become the best, I think the best players in the world win trophies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [the fee] might put pressure on him and me but nothing extra \u2013 if you have this [Liverpool badge] on your shirt there is always pressure,\u201d Slot added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe target a player and we want to have him. We decide what his value is, if that matches with what the club wants then we are not afraid to act. We get that money from trading players and winning the league after we didn\u2019t spend anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n Guardian\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arne Slot has defended Alexander Isak over his decision to go on strike in order to force a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1113,42,2539,5782,43,5783,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-17879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-fai","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-league-of-ireland","11":"tag-local-soccer","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-premiership","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}