'Extraordinary' star backed to return to form

Liverpool have been all over the place this season, and very few of the new signings have been able to live up to their price tags. It's imperative that we see the team recover from their slump.

Arne Slot's tactical set-up for the campaign has been figured out, with the Premier League heading into a direction of play which exploits some of the Reds' biggest weaknesses. We're having to adapt.

The big-name signings haven't necessarily been 'flops' as people on social media might have you think, but it's clear that Liverpool have a lot of room for improvement. Florian Wirtz is yet to have a Premier League goal contribution, and Hugo Ekitike has gone off the boil after starting well.

But there's one Red in particular who's yet to really give us a glimmer of his quality and he's been given backed quite heavily by his former employer to get back to the heights of previous seasons.

Isak is expected to return to form

In an interview with Sky Sports News at the Riyadh Season boxing fight, headlined by Connor Benn vs Chris Eubank Jr, former Newcastle director Amanda Staveley was asked about Alexander Isak.

She said: "We love Alex and we know he's going to do really well at Liverpool. He's a great player, Liverpool have got an extraordinary player, but equally so, it's great to see the forwards [at Newcastle] and Newcastle performing really well."

Of course, Staveley left her role as head of the Saudi consortium that bought Newcastle back in July 2024, so she did not oversee the Swede's departure from Tyneside, although she was present when Isak was signed by the Magpies back in 2022.

We all know what the 26-year-old is capable of being extraordinary for the Reds, but when he's going to start showing those qualities to the fans is another question. He's managed to play just 429 minutes for Liverpool so far, scoring and assisting once in that time, but we need more from him.

The £130m player has three years of Premier League experience under his belt, so it didn't feel inconceivable for him to hit the ground running, in spite of his lack of preseason in the summer.

But it has taken a while for him to reach full fitness, and most recently we've seen him struggling with a groin concern - something that has bothered him throughout his career to date, a cause for unease.

However, he did feature briefly for the Swedish national team on Saturday evening, making a key pass and winning all four of the duels he was involved in. There's promise that he might be able to get a run in Slot's team when he comes back next week, when the fixture difficulty eases a little.

In knowing that Mohamed Salah is heading off to AFCON in just a few weeks, it's imperative that Liverpool have their attackers firing on all cylinders to cover the Egyptian's absence, and ideally, we'll get a proper glimpse at what Isak's capable of when he's got like Wirtz creating for him.

Richard Hughes' recruitment plan made sense in theory, but we're yet to see it all work out in practice - hopefully, we're now closer than ever to Slot managing to make that happen for us.

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