Why Eddie Howe chose to send Isak ‘home’ from pre-season

Eddie Howe seemed less convincing than usual about keeping Alexander Isak at Newcastle after sending the Liverpool target ‘back home’ from a pre-season game.

Newcastle continued their preparations for the upcoming Premier League season with a visit to Celtic Park to take on the Scottish champions.

While Isak was not guaranteed to play as he is being eased back into the team after suffering an injury on international duty, the decision was taken to not only omit him from the squad entirely but send him home.

Joelinton was also absent but watched a 4-0 defeat for the Magpies from the stands, an option Howe chose to remove from Isak’s hands entirely.

“It was my decision,” Howe said after the game.

“He travelled to Glasgow with us but I decided to send him home due to the speculation around him.

“The last thing he wanted was to be sat in the stand watching – that wasn’t fair to him. But I’m confident he will be a Newcastle player come the end of the window.”

It was a far cry from previous public statements about how Isak was “not for sale” despite intense interest from Arsenal, Liverpool and even further afield in centre-forward Isak.

But Liverpool making it known they would be willing to go as high as a British record £120m for the Sweden international might have rocked Newcastle’s self-assurance in terms of keeping their most prized asset.

Howe agreed with the assessment that Isak was “irreplaceable” and said he had spoken to the player about his future.

“Your top players are so hard to find, so hard to recruit and so hard to develop. So when you have them, you need to treasure them. Of course we’re desperate to keep him as part of our team,” he added.

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“I’ve had discussions with him, but that’s not abnormal. I respect a player’s career and how short it is. Alex has been really good, he’s trained really well and I realise there’ll be noise around him.”

Fabrizio Romano has said that Isak “is very calm” about the situation and “knows very well that Newcastle want to keep him,” but “at the same time, he knows that Liverpool would offer not just important money but an ambitious project, too”.

“So Alexander Isak is not closing doors to this possibility and Liverpool were never going to make club-to-club contact without a feeling that the player would be open to the idea of a move,” the journalist added, with the suggestion that Isak has even given the ‘green light’ to what would be a curious move to Saudi Arabia.

Howe also felt that while “the power of our fitness usually shows through in our performances,” it was “the other way around” against Celtic.

“That was a really good test for us,” he said after goals from Arne Engels, Johnny Kenny, Yang Hyun-Jun and Liam Scales capped a humbling afternoon. “I think the pre-season is designed to really test us.

“We know we’ve got a very challenging season ahead with all the competitions that we are in.

“This was a test that, maybe, came a little bit too early for us. We have had a long week in Austria, not making excuses by the way, but the lads came into the game jaded, slightly, but it was a great workout for us.”