Alexander Isak has struggled for form since his £125m move to Liverpool, with Wayne Rooney backing him to come good while Mark Lawrenson urges Arne Slot to drop him for PSV clash
Mark Lawrenson believes Alexander Isak should be taken out of the firing line for in-form Liverpool teammate Hugo Ekitike. The 26-year-old striker arrived at Anfield on deadline day following a dramatic exit from St James’ Park, where he downed tools to engineer his move to the Premier League champions.
However, a lack of fitness and injury issues have hampered his start to life on Merseyside, which has coincided with Arne Slot’s struggles. His only goal for the Reds came in the Carabao Cup triumph over Southampton.
Isak was handed his first start in a month at the weekend against Nottingham Forest, but it proved to be another disappointing display. The performance was so lacklustre that Arne Slot has faced calls to axe the forward for Wednesday’s Champions League encounter with PSV.
READ MORE: Arne Slot behaviour blasted ‘disrespectful’ and ‘classless’ amid Liverpool crisisREAD MORE: Arne Slot sack suspicion raised as ‘massive’ Liverpool problem emerges
Ex-Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson, speaking on talkSPORT, has urged Reds boss Slot to bench Isak and play Ekitike, saying: “He [Isak] is not fit. Ekitike should be back in the team.
“How does he feel? He’s been the best of the two strikers. But the problem is, how do you get players fit if they can’t play in reserve games or anything?
“All you do is train and if you’re only training, it’s not the same, you’re about 25 per cent less than players in front of you.”
On Slot, Lawrenson added: “It’s one of those with the manager, he’s under pressure but his job’s safe. There’s no doubt about that whatsoever.
“You’ve just got to get the players together and go, ‘We start at 0-0 and make sure the nil is against us’. Until you start making yourself difficult to beat, the way we are at the moment, we just concede for fun.”
However, despite the mounting pressure, Wayne Rooney reckons the Sweden international deserves a sustained run in the team to rediscover his finest form, though he confessed he’d be livid if he were Hugo Ekitike.
“The new players coming in will be looking at the players from last season and thinking, ‘oh they’ve just won the league’ and probably feel a bit more pressure that they have to try to do… they probably want to try to prove that they are better than those players,” he said on The Wayne Rooney Show on BBC Sport.
“There will be a bit more pressure, and obviously it’s a big club, but I think Alexander Isak just needs a run of games.
“He just needs any type of goal to get him going and I’m sure he’ll find a good run of form after that. But he’ll be scratching his head. It’s hard when you’re going through a run of games and not scoring. You just have to try to keep everything simple.
“None of them [summer signings] have really paid off apart from Hugo Ekitike. If I was Ekitike, I’d be fuming if I wasn’t playing.”
