Why Alexander Isak Will Love Playing With Mohamed Salah
And it's more specific than Salah being one of the greatest players in the history of the Premier League.
Liverpool have signed Alexander Isak. Exciting, isn’t it?
The legendary front three of Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah was constructed over a period of three summers. With Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz accompanying Isak, the Reds have compacted a similar process into three months.
Other situations have changed too. When Liverpool made Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker the most expensive players in their respective positions, they were able to do so thanks to selling a key man for a windfall amount. In 2025, the Reds signed the three most expensive players that moved anywhere in the world this summer simply because they could.
FSG spent roughly £300m to acquire Liverpool. They have since built the club to the point they could drop more than that on three men in rapid succession. It’s a remarkable state of affairs, even allowing for inflation across 15 years.
Isak is the biggest signing of the trio for reasons other than finance. He has Premier League experience, is peak age and has been extracted from the kingdom of Geordie Arabia. The Swede also possesses a showreel that should be BAFTA-nominated.
Not that you need to watch this video. You follow Liverpool, you follow the Premier League. You’ve already seen all this compilation can show, if not so neatly packaged before.
There is no need to pore over Isak’s statistics either. He’s a superstar. He put up similar underlying numbers to Kylian Mbappé over the last year when playing for the side that finished fifth. That’s hot.
A better avenue of analysis is to look at how Isak was able to be so productive. A similar line of thinking led to this article on Wirtz:
Along with Patrik Schick he formed one of the two leading assist-scorer pairs in Europe’s big five leagues in 2024/25, producing seven goals. The other line with such potency flowed through Jacob Murphy to Isak.
Seven goals tops the most any Liverpool combination has put on record in a league campaign since at least 2009/10. Never mind what Bobby, Sadio and Mo could do, Isak delivered more in tandem with Murphy. Did I mention Newcastle finished fifth?
Murphy played on the right of the attack. Which is where Salah, winner of the Premier League Playmaker of the Season award in two of the last four seasons, is found. Can the Egyptian set up his new colleague in similar style to help him settle? Let’s have a look.
With Murphy being right-footed, it was inevitable that some of his assists for Isak were not Salah-esque. The 33-year-old won’t be delivering a cross of this nature.
Only six players delivered more Bundesliga assists via crosses than Jeremie Frimpong last term, so he is likelier to tee up the Reds’ new number nine in this fashion. Isak scored thanks to a more familiar delivery at Brentford. Though not received at the back post, Murphy’s arced delivery from the right half space summons memories of Salah crossing to Cody Gakpo.
Murphy also proved effective at through-ball passes to tee up his now former teammate, with two leading to goals. If not what you immediately think of with Salah, he has 17 of this assist type in league and Europe for Liverpool, plus he finished joint-top of the Premier League for them in 2021/22. Maybe this will be more of a Wirtz thing, given his through-ball record.
The second goal here is noteworthy as it was hit from outside the width of the six-yard box, a real rarity for Isak. He prowls the danger zone in the centre of the penalty area, ready to find space where none should exist.
There’s always more room when hitting teams on the counter, which Liverpool did more productively last season than any team since records began. Murphy got one such assist for Isak, at Turf Moor in May last year.
As rare as it was for them to combine on the counter, this is a decent example of their speciality: an assist pass travelling from the right of the box into the centre. Now we’re in Salah town. He can pick out anyone when in that region, as he proved last season.
Diogo Jota at Ipswich and Luis Díaz at Old Trafford early on. Gakpo against Manchester City at home, then Dominik Szoboszlai in the return match. Curtis Jones at St. James’ Park after Isak had opened the scoring; there are loads. From right of the box to central, from Salah to whoever happens to be there.
A couple of Murphy’s Isak assists in that zone felt worthy of the Egyptian King. The first of the two below carries echoes of the aforementioned City goal, with the ball threaded to the back post. The second features footwork that makes it very Salah. Backheeled assist? Yum.
This next pair reek of Liverpool. You can easily visualise, say, Alexis Mac Allister playing a backline breaking pass which enables Salah to square to Isak for a tap-in.
Our final two goals are paired as they feature the Murphy-Isak duo in close proximity in the centre of the box. This might happen with Salah, or perhaps it would work with Hugo Ekitike. A new-look front two, anyone?
(Trigger warning: the second was in the Carabao Cup final.)
No matter the method in which these goals came about, the quality of the finishing stands out. Ten of Isak’s 11 goals that were assisted by Murphy were Opta-defined big chances, collectively worth 5.3 expected goals. The Swede’s placement of the shots made them worth 9.2 in the post-shot model.
His psxG kept pace with his standard xG throughout his Newcastle career, which is not easy to achieve. Any blocked or off target shot immediately logs a score of zero in the post-shot expected goal model.
The below chart contains the last three seasons of Isak and Liverpool’s forwards in the Premier League. The Reds’ latest signing takes three of the top six spots as well as being the only man with two campaigns in credit.
We’ve drifted into poring over stats. Sugar pie, honey bunch, I can’t help myself. The reality is that Isak should score goals no matter with whom he links up or how the moves unfold. The versatility in his play proves as much.
Exciting, isn’t it?
The Murphy/Salah thing makes for a good hook but it was fun going through the various clips to see who else might set up those sorts of goals for the big Swede.
Great read. Not to be negative but I noticed that a lot of attacks break down after Salah receives the ball which also happened during last season. Do you have a way to put a number on that?
With Wirtz joining, I was hoping that he would take over the role of proving the last pass and allow Mo to focus on finishing.