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Meanwhile, after scoring his first Premier League<\/a> goal against West Ham, Alexander Isak<\/a> was once again selected over Hugo Ekitike up front.<\/p>\n Who was your Man of the Match against Sunderland? <\/p>\n \ud83d\udc47 Join the debate; share your insight. Use the comment button on the bottom left to have your say <\/p>\n Liverpool players don\u2019t understand Alexander Isak yet<\/p>\n While the Swede got up and running this past weekend, he saw very little of the ball in that game, and Wednesday was a similar story.<\/p>\n At the end of the first 45, Sky Sports News\u2019<\/a> Vinny O\u2019Connor said: \u201cI dread to think how sparse Isak\u2019s touch map is so far. <\/p>\n \u201cIn fairness, he\u2019s had little to no service in a first half performance that\u2019s lacked any real verve from the hosts.\u201d<\/p>\n A fair point backed up by the striker only completing one pass before the half-time whistle.<\/p>\n Liverpool\u2019s attack as a whole was poor, and it\u2019s clear Slot\u2019s players are still not accustomed to playing with a proper number nine.<\/p>\n Alan Shearer told the Reds what they must do with the ex-Newcastle United man in their team when speaking on The Rest Is Football<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n He said: \u201dI guess it\u2019s a bit of both, and they\u2019re going to have to play earlier balls into him. Because a lot of it is off-the-cuff, what Alex does.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just for him, but any striker. You\u2019ve got to get the ball into the box early when you\u2019ve got an opportunity to do it.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd they just gave one or two chances up to do that, and I was thinking, \u2018Oh, come on!\u2019 To get the best out of him and any forward, you\u2019ve got to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Isak<\/a> scored 23 goals in 34 Premier League games for Newcastle last term and if Liverpool<\/a> want him to notch similar numbers at Anfield, his teammates will have to form a better connection with the 26-year-old.<\/p>\n Regardless of how he played tonight, it seems clear the centre-forward won\u2019t start against Leeds on Saturday.<\/p>\n Isak did not have a proper pre-season and has not been back from injury for that long.<\/p>\n Three starts in six days would be a lot for any player, never mind one still lacking some match sharpness.<\/p>\n His absence shouldn\u2019t be a huge problem for Liverpool, though, as Ekitike remains their top goalscorer with six this term and, in truth, didn\u2019t do an awful lot wrong to warrant being dropped.<\/p>\n Join Our Newsletter <\/p>\n Receive a digest of our best Liverpool content each week direct to your mailbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool struggled to cause Sunderland a lot of problems for large periods of their Premier League clash. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[32030,1953,218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-298234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-alan-shearer","9":"tag-alexander-isak","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Florian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2249178892-1024x682.jpg\")
Photo by Paul ELLIS \/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Alexander](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2247934985-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Liverpool FC\/Liverpool FC via Getty ImagesAlexander Isak will likely be benched vs Leeds United<\/p>\n