Before I even start writing this, I’d like to make it abundantly clear that I am not absolving Alexander Isak of any wrongdoing here, because I can already preempt the pelters I’m in line to receive.
But Luke Edwards’ article yesterday looking at five of the biggest things that have happened during the post-takeover period thus far did get me thinking.
Edwards wrote about Isak’s departure, which of course we all remember for the most negative of reasons. During the article there were some pretty damning pieces of information that jumped out and made me really reconsider whether Isak was dealt a bad hand and maybe shouldn’t have been quite as villainised as he was during the saga.
The damning details
Edwards wrote about how Isak had actually wanted to leave the previous summer, but was then promised a new bumper contract which persuaded him to stay and allowed Eddie Howe to reintegrate him into the squad.
But that promised contract was then pulled with the club claiming they were unable to afford it. Now, I don’t know about you, but that would rub me up the wrong way too.
Then the Magpies won the Carabao Cup, a big achievement but one that couldn’t repair the irreversible damage done by broken promises and Isak ultimately decided he was leaving no matter what.
To me, at that stage, it would have probably made sense to adhere to his wishes, especially considering the club had essentially kept him at St James’ Park under false pretences the summer before. But, alas, we once again decided that he was going nowhere.
This time, though, there was not the sweetener of a new contract available to the club as they had already falsely played that card previously.
Again, if we place ourselves into the mind of Isak for a moment, if you had been prevented from pursuing another opportunity at work because you’d been offered a pay rise, only to never see that extra money and then have the company try and force you to stay despite an already broken relationship - what would your answer be?
The strike makes a bit more sense
Again, I am not attempting to rid Isak of any guilt here, but I do think our viewpoint as fans is exactly that in comparison to how we wanted Isak to handle the situation.
We are fans with a vested interest and emotional connection to the club. Isak, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, never had that and never claimed to have it, not to the extent of a Bruno Guimaraes anyway.
If you take all of that emotion out of it and look at purely the facts, including the clearly frosty relationships that were bubbling behind the scenes between Isak’s camp and the club, his decision to go on strike isn’t excusable, but does make a little more rational sense.
It is also worth noting that, in Edwards’ article, he talked about Bruno Guimaraes too who was also feeling out the idea of leaving the year before he actually did.
When he did eventually leave, Edwards wrote that he had been informed by a solid source that Bruno probably would have taken the same course of action as his former teammate, had Newcastle refused to sell him to Arsenal.
The dysfunctional hierarchy is partially to blame
There is no doubt that the hierarchy that included Amanda Staveley and Merhdad Ghodoussi was largely responsible for seeing the progress we did over such a short amount of time, but they also did a lot of things wrong and were dysfunctional in many ways.
The financial situation got to a point where the Magpies were backed into a corner with sales and, as we know, there were many broken promises made behind the scenes that caused major turmoil at different points.
Now I remember quite vividly that, when Isak’s statement came out about moving to Liverpool and what happened at Newcastle, there was major outrage among the fanbase who felt he was entirely in the wrong.
But if my memory serves me correctly he actually mentioned broken promises and things that went on behind the scenes which led to his departure, something that many of us at the time probably didn’t quite understand the extent of possibly until now.
Isak of course could have done a plethora of things differently, perhaps even been more open about the situation rather than going into his shell and disappearing whilst the madness unfolded. But even that may have been a decision made with the belief that he was trying to protect the club, ‘may’ is the word I will stress…
I’m not expecting some massive U-turn in the fans’ feelings towards Isak, nor have I had that myself. But I do think that all of the little pieces of evidence we have been shown since the Swede left the club point towards more factors being at play than simply his failures leading to the saga.
That’s probably not a popular opinion, and there are many completely defensible reasons to disagree with me on that point, but maybe Isak wasn’t a villain quite at the level we painted him out to be…
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