We need to slap a time limit on the whole Alexander Isak thing | OneFootball

I try not to get too distracted by all the transfer gossip, because generally, that’s all it is, gossip, with zero factual foundation, but, and I do like a nice but, while having a browse this morning…

Cast your mind back to 2003, and yes, I’m assuming that you are 30 plus years old.

The Premier league was thrown into chaos when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovic turned up with a yacht full of cash and bought Chelsea.

Within two years the club had lost 140 million quid and stated that theirs was a long-term plan and they did not expect to be profitable until 2010.

At this point Abramovic brought in “The Special One” and spent a few hundred million more buying him players.

Since that suspicious, sorry…auspicious start, Chelsea have won 5 Premier League titles, 5 FA Cups, 3 League Cups, 3 Community Shields, 2 Champions Leagues, 2 Europa Leagues and 2 FIFA Word Club Cups, and as a bonus the FA decided to introduce regulations to stop anyone doing this again.

Except Manchester City, of course.

Fans all over the world made fun of Chelsea because they had obviously bought their status and their titles, and the fact they had done it with dodgy money didn’t make it any more palatable.

The Financial Fair Play rules were brought in for a reason, to stop owners from doing that again.

Of course, it was easy for us to get behind this because we never thought in a million years that we would end up on the raggy end of those restrictions. But here we are.

In addition to FFP we also have, hanging over our bank account, “Associated Party Transaction” rules and the concept of “Fair Market Value.” This mainly covers shirt sponsorship, stadium renaming and what I have my concerns about today, player transfers.

The rules are intended to prevent owners who own more than one club from using one club to help another.

There are three things the owners could do that immediately spring to mind.

1. Club A could buy an in-demand player from club B at a fee above what is considered Fair Market Value, injecting required capital into club B. This could happen between clubs who are not owned by the same owner – think Odysseas Vlachodimos and Elliot Anderson.

2. Club A could buy an in-demand player from club B at a price well below Fair Market Value, which is obviously the flip side of the same coin mentioned above.

3. Club A could buy from club B a player that nobody else wanted, freeing up funds to bring in another player.

This brings me round to the whole Alexander Isak affair.

I’m not interested in his decision making process, or his behaviour, what I want to talk about here is the interpretation of the above three rules.

I read an article recently that claimed that Isak was worth his weight in gold to us, but having made the calculations using his claimed weight and current gold prices he’s worth way more than that.

We are still at a point in our development where every player has a price. In a few years time, when we have increased our revenues to a level that we are sustainable, we might be able hang onto players regardless of what is offered, but at the moment a profit of 60 million on a player is what the whole enforced football business model is all about.

And Isak’s apparent attitude – that I’m not going to mention – helps us make such decisions.

Newcastle United have basically said that Liverpool can have him if they pay our price, which I believed was originally 120 million.

To make matters more interesting, Al Hilal showed interest in the Swede.

As if that didn’t make things interesting enough, we share an owner with Al Hilal, which now brings the whole FFP, APT, FMV family of acronyms into the game.

One could argue that if Liverpool think 120 million is a Fair Market Value for the striker then surely nobody could object to Al Hilal taking him for that?

Then to make things extra spicy the story of Al Hilal offering £600,000 tax free a week emerges.

Newcastle won 5-0 away at Al Hilal in a friendly back in 2022

The whole Al Hilal involvement thing could be a cunning plan of Badlrickian proportions. It is possible that, being majority-owned by PIF, Al Hilal have been thrown into the mix to try to firm up the interest of Liverpool. The release of the 600K salary information is interesting because it could have the opposite affect, with Liverpool saying “forget it. We can’t compete with that!” in which case Isak might end up asking to stay.

We’ve reportedly turned down a 120 million pound offer from Liverpool. Losing Isak would put us in a bit of a hole. We seem to be having a difficult enough time bringing in a decent striker to replace Wilson, so making that two to replace Alexander Isak as well, just took it to a whole new level of difficult.

It is reported that Liverpool will not be coming back with an improved bid. It would be fair to assume that this is to keep their spending in check – ish.

I’m sure many fans have decided that the obvious way out here is to take a part-ex from Liverpool.

They seem keen to get rid of Darwin Nunez, and we should consider taking him off their hands at a bargain price, using him as makeweight in the deal, while also conveniently being a Wilson replacement. Stop us sinking further into that aforementioned hole.

I read an article this morning that was accompanied by a strange burning smell.

The cogs were turning.

Al Hilal are apparently now interested in taking Nunez.

If Nunez goes to Al Hilal, for say, 60 million, and then Liverpool, with extra funds now available, come back in for Alexander Isak with a bid of around 140 million, would we find ourselves again back in the Associated Party Transaction cross-hairs?

Could the football authorities decide that by buying Nunez and providing Liverpool with the funds they need to buy Isak, Club A, Al Hilal, have helped out club B, the Toon?

If this is the case, how many transfers removed could this be taken?

We need to slap a time limit on the whole Alexander Isak thing.

If he goes we then have to go out and buy a quality replacement and we are rapidly approaching the time where other clubs, regardless of the price offered, would refuse to part with their strikers for fear of not having time to bring in their replacements.

Personally, I bear no ill will for Alexander Isak, and would love to see him stay, even if it was only to push through a transfer during a later window.