Arne Slot makes fresh Alexander Isak Liverpool vow before Man United

Arne Slot makes fresh Alexander Isak Liverpool vow before Man United - 'Can safely say'

Alexander Isak joined Liverpool for a British-record fee of £125m from Newcastle on September 1 and is now considered up to speed by his boss Arne Slot

Arne Slot says Alexander Isak is now ready to start paying Liverpool his £125m transfer fee back - starting with Manchester United on Sunday. Isak moved to Anfield on transfer deadline day for a British record fee but the acrimonious nature of his move from Newcastle United meant he arrived having not had the benefit of a pre-season schedule.

After going on strike to force through a move to Merseyside, Isak was made to train alone in his final weeks on Tyneside, which has had a knock-on effect for how he has been able to start the season with his new club.

Sweden international Isak has been present for 312 of the 630 minutes played by Liverpool since he signed at the beginning of September, but having also made two appearances for his national side during the break, Slot is now banking on his No.9 to start firing.

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"I used the word ‘judge’ but I don’t mean judge," Slot said. "I think not me, but the outside world can from now on say we have the one we signed.

"That is better, so the first five or six weeks, of course we had the player we signed but he was not completely ready yet. He was just getting fitter and fitter but just had to do this in a Premier League game. This is not normal for a player.

"I think I have said many times we have signed him for six years so if we want him somewhere we have to go through this period of playing him where ideally you would use him earlier in a friendly match than a Premier League game or a Champions League game.

"But there is no time in the middle of the season for a friendly match so we had to build him up playing Premier League matches and I think you have to be on top of your game to make a difference at this level.

"You can play at this level if you are maybe 80 or 90 or 95% but if you want to make a difference at the highest level of football, because that is what the Premier League is, then you need to be 100%. It goes for every player and I think I can safely say he is 100% now.

"[I want to see] goals. That is the most simple thing but to be the leader in pressing from our front three, there we can improve as well, that is something he needs to do, but Hugo Ekitike is the same.

"Of course you are a No.9 at Liverpool, you need to score goals but that is what he has always done in his life.

"The only thing he needs to be is fit and if he is fit, our team is still creating the most chances from open play in the Premier League and we have the most shots on target in the Premier League from open play."

On the prospect of playing Isak and Hugo Ekitike together from the start more often, Slot added: "At every other club it is like that, by the way, but we could play them both. What we have tried to do is to bring in players that give us more and more options for this season.

"That is what we did and that is also the reason why sometimes one of the options isn’t playing and if you win no one is talking about it but if you don’t win it is always about that player that is not playing but what we have tried to do is get more options, which you can argue if that has happened because we have mainly replaced but I like the replacements we have brought in.

"We have a lot of options, like we had last season, and it is up to me to make the right decision for every single game but that will always mean there are one, two, three, four, five players on the bench that can easily play for us or start for us.

"If I, for example, I play with these two and I don’t play with Florian Wirtz or I don’t play with Dominik Szoboszlai, you would ask me, how are you going to bring all those in?

"It is part of being a manager at Arsenal, at Chelsea, at Manchester City, at us, at Tottenham, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 starters at your squad."

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