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The true reason why Newcastle fans are losing their mind over Alexander Isak
Paul Macdonald
- Updated: 20 Aug 2025 11:39 BST
- 6 min read
News
Looking at Newcastle’s most expensive sales ever gives you an insight into the real understanding as to why they remain so incensed about this Alexander Isak situation.
It’s completely new to them.
Newcastle weren’t a team worth playing for, for quite a long time. It then took a massive injection of Saudi Arabian money - the most spent by a club in a single transfer market year until Manchester City overtook them in 2025 - for them to actually bring in players other teams wanted to buy.
Current ETV
Alexander Isak
F (C)
Newcastle
Alexander Isak
F (C)
Newcastle
ETV Range
€105.4M - €128.8M
If you’d like to refute that, let’s take a quick look at their record sales:
- 2025: Elliott Anderson to Nottingham Forest (£35m) - a deal done purely for PSR purposes in which the player hadn’t played all that much and didn’t really want to leave anyway.
- 2011: Andy Caroll to Liverpool (£35m) - This transfer - ironically for Liverpool - was contentious at the time but they got a gigantic fee for a distinctly average forward. Also, it was FIFTEEN years ago.
- 2016: Moussa Sissoko to Tottenham (£30m) - Another really good fee for an OK player that everyone seemed pretty content with.
- 2024: Yankuba Minteh to Brighton (£30m) - Another PSR sale because of the financial predicament they themselves created, and a player who barely even featured for Newcastle before being sold. Fans were happy to take the money.
- 2019: Ayoze Perez to Leicester (£25m) - A completely hit-and-miss player who moved to Leicester, didn’t achieve all that much more, and won’t be remembered in club folklore.
These are Newcastle’s top five sales EVER. Liverpool will likely give them the total of all these deals COMBINED for Isak, and it still represents a problem to fans.
And that’s the difference.
Newcastle dealt a lesson about football's hierarchy
The club itself are pissed - and whoever is right about Isak’s late-night Instagram rant is still unclear, though it probably doesn’t matter - but they will almost certainly make the right call and sell a player who is, by far, the biggest asset in the history of Newcastle United.
It’s not even close. Alan Shearer broke the transfer record in 1996, but the next year Ronaldo to Barcelona usurped him and makes the Shearer deal seem totally obsolete. In the case of Isak, this is a prime, in-form talent who could easily play for any club in the world. He is world-class. Newcastle haven’t had many (any) of those.
In the midst of all these Saudi millions they were so happy to celebrate, they expected to join the top tier of clubs, one that all these arrivals would embrace and never want to leave. And what they are discovering - something that legitimately big clubs that don’t need Shearer to go to bat for them in public already completely understand - is that there’s a hierarchy.
Real Madrid are at the apex, no matter who you are, unless you play for Barcelona. Barca, despite their financial woes, still come next. Then it’s Liverpool, Man City, Bayern, PSG, maybe Arsenal, probably not Chelsea or Manchester United, but they are still above the rest. Then there’s Tottenham and - at a push - Juventus.
Everything else is a tier or more below, and Newcastle fans are waking up to this fact. A summer of signing no one elite, being rejected by numerous suitors, being outbid by supposedly ‘weaker teams’, and wearing a PSR restriction as a badge of honour.
And now Isak. They’ve never had an Isak. He is, and maybe will always be, the player at his maximum value in the transfer market while playing at St James’ Park.
United have Cristiano Ronaldo, Liverpool Luis Suarez, Fernando Torres, Philippe Coutinho, Arsenal have Cesc Fabregas, Thierry Henry. Chelsea have Arjen Robben, Eden Hazard. Tottenham have Gareth Bale, Harry Kane. Hell, even Aston Villa have Jack Grealish.
Clubs ultimately understand when a player wants to leave and the order of things. Newcastle’s recent history of signings pre-Saudi is so filled with garbage that no player was able to become close to Isak.
But now he’s doing what every player on the list above - absolutely, bona-fide, 21st century superstars, most if not all of them - did to their clubs; demanded to leave. Bigger clubs than Newcastle.
This is what happens and it’s time to understand that despite some dirty money, there’s still a career that players map out. And most of them don’t include Newcastle as a stop.
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