Isak comes back from Sweden with a toe problem
Alexander Isak is back at Liverpool with a toe injury (11). He withdrew from the Sweden squad and misses the rest of the international break (1) (2) (20). The club statement is the usual dry sentence: "a minor injury" (11).
Four goals in five Premier League games, and now scans (11). He is 26, in the best form of his Liverpool career, and the fixture that matters most this autumn is the next one.
Liverpool sit 6th on 9 points from 5 games, +3 goal difference, form reading D W W D W. Two home draws already, 2–2 with Nottingham Forest on August 29 and 0–0 with Fulham on September 12. Iraola's side creates, but the finishing has been narrow. Isak is the reason it has been narrow rather than absent.
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Everything runs through a striker with no deputy
Here is the part that should worry you more than the toe. Take Isak's four league goals out of this team and the attacking structure gets thin fast.
Florian Wirtz has 18 goal involvements in 55 Liverpool games, a 47% drop from the rate he produced at Bayer Leverkusen (21). That is the record signing's output under a microscope, and the microscope is not going away. Bradley Barcola arrived for €125m and Ruud Gullit already doubts his first season will land (9).
That is two heavyweight signings still finding their feet, and the man carrying the goals is the one flying home for treatment. Jeremie Frimpong has lost his Netherlands place because he cannot get minutes at Anfield (5) (15). When the squad is this deep on paper and this dependent on one No 9 in practice, the paper is lying.
2–0, and the record finally breaks
Amid all that, Anfield got a derby it had waited years for. Liverpool Women beat Everton 2–0 in the WSL Merseyside derby, Beata Olsson after four minutes and Cornelia Kapocs on 86 (3) (4) (10). Both goals Swedish. Olsson: "Jag är så glad, det var en fantastisk match" (10). The long WSL derby record against Everton is over (4), and Iraola was in the stands to watch it (Reddit).
That result should not be a footnote this week. It is the one clean, unambiguous win the club produced.
What to watch
The scans decide everything. If Isak is fit, Liverpool go into Manchester City at home on Sunday October 11 with their best weapon on the pitch (NEXT MATCH). If he is not, Iraola has to solve a problem he has spent the whole autumn avoiding: what this team looks like without him.
Julian Ward is back as sporting director too, replacing Richard Hughes (22). Whoever is deciding the January business now has Van Dijk's future on the desk (8) (16) and an £80m winger who never arrived still talking about it (6) (13) (14).
