Isak Ahead of Everton: “The Quality is There, So We Just Need to Show It”
· Yahoo Sports
Liverpool’s season is, more or less, focused entirely on Champions League qualification. Mired in 5th, the club are currently in driving position for a berth in next year’s competition thanks to the Premier League getting a 5th slot in the new expanded format. Additionally, Liverpool are only 4 points off of 4th place and their nearest rivals for the final spot – Chelsea – failed to take any points in their own match-up on Saturday.
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Which is to say: a Liverpool win against Everton in the Merseyside Derby would put give them much needed breathing room in the only remaining objective for the club in what will likely be viewed as a lost season for the Reds. And key to being able to achieve even that will be whether striker Alexander Isak can find enough fitness and form after a long injury layoff to contribute to an attack that has failed to gel over the course of the season.
Isak’s own struggles to find the form that had many naming him the second best striker in the entire league just prior to his move to Anfield is well-documented. And the circumstances his injury – achieved whilst scoring his first goal for the club – feels well in keeping with what’s felt like a monkey’s paw of a season.
The forward, for his part, has made 3 starts, each lasting only about 60 minutes each. With Hugo Ekitike out for the rest of the season due to an ACL injury, Liverpool’s hopes of securing qualification in the Champions League really comes down to Isak and the rest of the offense finally getting their collective shit together.
Speaking to the official site ahead of the Merseyside Derby, Isak talked a bit about the weight of the occasion:
“It’s those moments and those games we want to play, and hopefully we can make a good day out of it. I think we just need to do a good performance, work hard and play as a team. The quality is there, so we just need to show it.”
Liverpool are going to need for the promise of that quality to come good. I, for one, remain optimistic if a bit more insistent on needing to see things improve sooner rather than later. I struggle to see how you can have the consistent returns and quality of play that Isak, for example, has amassed across two different leagues and suddenly fail to put it all together. Slightly differences in career history aside, I feel similarly about Florian Wirtz. It doesn’t mean that the individual players can’t take accountability for improving, but this is one of those situations where the questions around head coach Arne Slot do feel reasonable: how are you handed a team that seems ready built – that, on paper, looks improved upon last year’s iteration – and fail to make anything of this season?
I am, perhaps, more patient and willing to see out the rest of the year with Slot in charge than others are. That patience has always had a limit. And seeing the disastrous outcome mid-week feels very much like the last, regrettable straw. I can’t predict what FSG will do with Slot, but I can’t imagine him entering the next year in charge under any circumstance. And that is, perhaps, the most damning thing I can say about the whole affair.