Newcastle United pressure Savona and Juventus for agreement
The first suggestion of interest came from Sky Sports UK this afternoon, but that has grown rapidly in the last few hours, with reports of conversations both with the club and his entourage.
It is not the first time that the right-back has been linked with a potential Premier League move, as he was already mentioned around Manchester City in January, when they failed to secure his Juve teammate Andrea Cambiaso.
Newcastle United increase focus on Savona
Savona turned 22 in March and has been called up for international duty with the senior Italy squad, but is yet to make his debut at this level.
He only recently signed a new contract to June 2030, so was not expected to be on the market this summer, but Juventus are struggling to sell and need fresh funds to bring in different players.
Another issue Newcastle United must take into consideration is that Savona badly sprained his ankle in the FIFA Club World Cup and is going to be out until at least mid-September.
It is particularly important, seeing as Sky Sport Italia transfer pundit Gianluca Di Marzio warns Newcastle will only go in for Savona if Tino Livramento joins Manchester City first.
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New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Newcastle United, Alexander Isak's wish to leave, and the challenge of being elite
Newcastle United are an elite team. They are fresh from winning a trophy in their second cup final in the space of three seasons. Over the same period, they have finished fourth, seventh and fifth in the Premier League and they are back in the Champions League, where they last played in 2023-24. Europe, competing, winning; these things are becoming their natural domain. They have an exceptional head coach and some brilliant players. Advertisement Newcastle are not an elite club. They do not have a purpose-built training ground and St James' Park is ageing. At £83.6million ($113m) in their last published accounts, their annual commercial income is dwarfed by those of the traditional 'Big Six' (Arsenal, who earned the least of them last season, still raked in £218.3m). As things stand, they have no sporting director and have not appointed a successor to Darren Eales, the chief executive, who is on medical leave while serving his notice. An elite club needs an elite team. It could also do with a strategy. These twin threads — of what it takes to be elite — snake back over two or three years, as Howe's first team has raced ahead of a club scrambling to rebuild after the inertia of the Mike Ashley era while hemmed in by the Premier League's profit and sustainability Rules (PSR). On the one hand, they have spent big since their Saudi-led takeover in 2021, but on the other, Anthony Elanga's recent arrival from Nottingham Forest came after three successive transfer windows with no first-team-ready signings. Somewhere in the middle of all that stands Alexander Isak, a player who has developed under Howe into one of the most complete forwards around, a game-changer and a match-winner who has scored 20 goals or more in consecutive Premier League seasons. If the £60m Newcastle spent on Isak in 2022 was a calculated gamble — the Sweden international had huge potential but could drift towards the periphery — it has long since paid off. This summer, Newcastle have been given a brutal education in what being elite entails. Several oven-ready players they have either targeted or approached — Bryan Mbeumo, Liam Delap, Joao Pedro and Hugo Ekitike among them — have moved to more established clubs, either in terms of history, reputation or paying power. And now, Isak, their most important and valuable asset, wishes to leave and has been omitted from their pre-season tour to Asia. Advertisement In isolation, this kind of thing can happen to any club. Isak did not grow up a Newcastle fan who dreamt of scoring in front of the Gallowgate End. As a fanbase, as a region, we yearn for people to be swept away by our beautiful madness, to get us and buy into us, and Isak has done that while becoming part of a team that has delivered a moment of immortality. Yet careers are finite and he has a right to look around and consider his options. At Liverpool, who recently expressed an interest in buying Isak for £120m, Mohamed Salah has commanded a basic weekly wage of £350,000, which The Athletic has reported was actually closer to £1m once external commercial endorsements were taken into account. Salah was the only player to score more goals than Isak in the Premier League last season, but Newcastle's highest earners are on around £150,000-a-week. In relative terms, that is not stratospheric. Away from the training ground, there has been a degree of confidence regarding Isak's position over recent months. After the shambles of a year ago, when PSR was pressing in and Newcastle sold Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh to raise £60m and head off a double-figure points deduction, they no longer need to sell. With Isak having three years on his contract, they felt they were in a position of strength, although this was always dependent on the player's attitude. Discussing a new deal with Isak was always part of the plan this summer. An elite club like Liverpool could offer him £300,000-a-week, but could Newcastle? 'We aren't the biggest payers in the league, because we don't generate the most income,' Howe told reporters after Newcastle's 4-0 friendly defeat to Celtic last weekend. 'So, we have to fall in line with PSR, be very smart with what we do. We have to control the wages of the players we have.' It is not particularly helpful to point out that Newcastle have a baked-in disadvantage here, just as any upwardly mobile club does. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle's majority owners, have the wherewithal to pay elite salaries and elite transfer fees, but the system does not allow it, and although that system is designed to protect football from unbalanced spending, it also serves to protect those already at the top. Advertisement How do ambitious clubs circumnavigate that or compete with it? They get bigger, and in Newcastle's case, their overall revenue for the financial year 2023-24 was £320.3m, a 28 per cent year-on-year increase which Eales described as 'unprecedented growth in football.' Pretty impressive until you see what they're up against; for the same period, Manchester City's revenue was £715m, more than double. The other way is to sell, and here Newcastle are both locked in a corner and still to crack the code. Their model post-takeover has been to sell at the right time and the right place; when Bruno Guimaraes joined them in that first, manic January window, leading figures at the club speculated in private about getting a good couple of years out of him and then selling, reinvesting and going again, but that moment never happened. Desperation to avoid relegation made them spend. Injury to Callum Wilson made them spend on Isak. Qualifying for the Champions League the first time obliged them to spend again to deepen their playing pool, then a ridiculous rash of injuries mitigated against selling. Nobody touched Guimaraes for a release clause set at £100m and when the time (inevitably) came that they had no choice but to sell, it was no longer on their terms. Having trimmed their squad over the past 12 months, Newcastle have more room for manoeuvre and have been able to do very little about it, Elanga apart. Selling Isak would wipe out PSR issues for the foreseeable future, but it would weaken them in a position which they already needed reinforcements for and which is notoriously difficult and expensive to fill. This at the very moment the Champions League beckons once again. As The Athletic has reported, Newcastle are exploring a move for Benjamin Sesko, the RB Leipzig striker, in the event that Isak goes, with the caveat that this 'would be highly challenging from a financial perspective.' Plus, Isak is a guarantee of Premier League goals. As of yet, Sesko is not. At some point, Newcastle need to master the art of the deal, but nobody wants it to be Isak and nobody wants it to be now. This remains the view of the club, but it is also another thread. Older supporters are still scarred by the loss of Peter Beardsley, Chris Waddle, Paul Gascoigne and, a little later, Andy Carroll. Countless managers, including Rafa Benitez and Howe, have been paranoid about letting players go, particularly when finances have been tight, because they have never been certain about securing replacements. In spring last year, with Dan Ashworth on gardening leave prior to joining Manchester United, Amanda Staveley, then a Newcastle co-owner, stepped in to handle contract negotiations with Joelinton, the Brazil international. Staveley had previously done something similar with Guimaraes, the logjam was broken and both players signed. Since then, Staveley has gone and so, too, has Paul Mitchell, Ashworth's replacement as sporting director. Advertisement Staveley's personal touch has never been replaced – which is more important than might be imagined – and two huge positions of influence at the top of the club are currently vacant, which is sub-optimal to say the least, particularly when you want to demonstrate to your best player that he is absolutely integral and that you mean business. Who would be doing the talking, the haggling, the praising? Those positions will be filled, but relationships will be new again and the new arrivals will have their own ideas and way of working. It returns Howe to the beginning of last season when his dressing room was left unsettled by a disrupted summer and it took all of his power to turn things around. The head coach managed it back then and perhaps he will manage it again, but it does not feel sustainable. As someone close to Howe told The Athletic not too long ago, speaking anonymously to protect relationships: 'No one fully understands apart from Eddie and his staff just how difficult this season has been. Things could have gone very differently.' This notion of progress, what it looks like and how they get there is both fascinating and fraught. It would help if Newcastle could point to something tangible happening with a new stadium, or share a vision for a new training ground and say 'this is the club we are and will be,' but those big decisions have been repeatedly deferred. It would help if there were somebody to do the pointing; why must every appointment take so bloody long? It would help if they could pay big money, but how to do that without demolishing the wage bill? It would help if they sold a big player, except how does it actually help you to help a rival which is already elite? Not for the first time in living memory, albeit in very different circumstances, Newcastle the club is holding back Newcastle the team. Not for the first time, at least some of it is self-inflicted. ()
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
Newcastle United Now Facing Nightmare Alexander Isak Scenario
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 02: Alexander Isak of Newcastle United celebrates scoring ... More his team's first goal during the Premier League match between Newcastle United FC and Arsenal FC at St James' Park on November 02, 2024 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. (Photo by) Since Saturday's pre-season defeat at Celtic, the Alexander Isak saga at Newcastle United has taken a difficult turn for those inside the club. Liverpool's admiration for the Swedish striker is well known, and expectation has been growing for weeks that the Premier League champions would make a move to sign him. Newcastle always held firm, believing Isak would not force anything. As of Thursday, that assumption looks to have backfired. Isak is understood to have told Newcastle he wants to explore his options this summer, having not been named in the travelling party for the tour of Asia, which jetted off this morning. It comes after he was sent home from Glasgow at the weekend before being photographed training alone earlier this week. The club is maintaining he suffered a minor thigh injury, its justification for his most recent absence too, but the narrative has spiralled. Once it emerged that Isak had made his feelings known to Newcastle, with The Athletic claiming he preferred not to take part in either the Celtic match or the tour, many pieced together where this had seemingly always been heading. But for all the fall out from what is clearly been an extremely damaging day, little has actually changed. It is not news that Isak wants to consider a switch to Liverpool or anywhere. Whilst he hasn't gone public, the lack of denial became deafening, and one key Howe quote has become extremely relevant. 'I've had discussions with (Isak),' Howe told reporters at the weekend. 'But that's not abnormal. I respect a player's career and how short it is. Alex has been really good, he's trained really well and I realise there'll be noise around him.' Whilst not saying anything outright, the inference from the 'career is short' part can be that Isak told Howe what has now become public knowledge. But it also gives insight into a dynamic which means Newcastle is still in a strong position, albeit having to accept that the dynamic has changed in a huge way this week. Isak still needs to force Newcastle to change its stance, and the club has been ready for this. He is not the kind of person to push in a big way; he loves the club, fans, city, and in particular Howe and his team-mates. It is far from inconceivable that he could keep his head down this season and perform as he has for the last three, or even sign a new contract on improved terms. But all of this is being said while Liverpool remains an interested bystander. All summer, it has briefed its interest in a deal if given encouragement; never has there been more. The Reds could now bid, despite having completed the signing of former Newcastle target Hugo Ekitike, and Newcastle's resolve will meet its sternest test. How Isak's camp would react would also be telling; there is also the possibility that broadcasting his intentions could attract wider interest, too. Newcastle United's English head coach Eddie Howe (L) applauds as Newcastle United's Swedish striker ... More #14 Alexander Isak celebrates on stage at the Town Moor in Newcastle upon Tyne, in north-east England, on March 29, 2025, during a celebration and presentation of the League Cup trophy with fans after Newcastle United won the English League Cup, their first domestic trophy for 70 years. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP) (Photo by OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images) This is where the question of timing comes in, though. As mentioned, interest in Isak has been an open secret for months; his agents have held conversations with other clubs for some time. Liverpool and Arsenal have been the most heavily linked, but only now, after Ekitike completed his move to Anfield and Viktor Gyokeres, his Sweden team-mate, closes in on a move to North London, has the twist emerged. Surely the time to speak up was last week, when Newcastle could have secured Ekitike as his replacement and Liverpool would have firmed up its interest. While many insist Arne Slot's team can afford both, sales need to be made. Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Harvey Elliot are all expected to depart, but if that has to happen before Isak can be considered, it is far from certain. To make a play now, with no obvious direction of travel, and Newcastle in an even more desperate state to keep him, is a curious decision to say the least, considering he has three years to run on his existing contract. The club has matched his ambition on the pitch, winning its first major trophy in 70 years and qualifying again for the Champions League. There has been a quiet acceptance inside Newcastle that if a new deal couldn't be agreed, Isak would depart for a huge profit next summer. That was the thought behind signing Ekitike; the player would have more sway with just two years left and more clubs could be ready to make a move. Barcelona, for example, has scouted Isak and will be looking for replacement for Robert Lewandowski in 2026. But Isak is already one of the best strikers in the world and deserves to be paid like one. He isn't at Newcastle - earning £120,000-per-week ($162,000) - and, although there has always been hope of a compromise, is unlikely to ever get the sort of wages players of his ilk command. Also, as important as the Champions League is to Isak, he wants to win it, not simply play in it. It has been clear from the moment Isak scored his first Newcastle goal that he would likely outgrow the club. Profit and Sustainability Rules have handcuffed its ability to improve, which has frustrated the players too. Last summer, there was all kinds of unrest, and Isak wasn't immune. After reportedly being told he would be in line for a new deal in the spring of 2024 by former shareholder Amanda Staveley, he was then of interest to Chelsea before Staveley departed. Paul Mitchell arrived as sporting director and is said to have shelved the plans, leaving the player and his agent furious (per the Mail). Nothing quite sums up the contrasting nature of the current era at Newcastle; fiercely ambitious, yet tightly constrained. Similar stories of discontent surrounded Anthony Gordon last summer, and he ended up signing a new contract at St James' Park. All is not lost in the Isak story. It feels as though Newcastle took Isak's laid back manner for granted. It didn't make signing a new contract a priority this summer, choosing instead to target new arrivals before coming to discussions later on. Only one signing - admittedly a close friend of Isak's in Anthony Elanga - is through the door now the club is in a difficult situation. Frustrating your best player and refusing to engage until it is too late is not a good sign. Selling Isak would have been a bad idea at any stage this summer, but with the lack of signings and growing fan frustration, doing so now would be an unmitigated disaster. Newcastle's position remains strong but the situation is incredibly delicate. Howe is an excellent man-manager, players will run through brick walls for him. After last season's difficult summer, he talked the squad, and Isak, down; this year it'll be even more of a challenge. This was supposed to be the summer when everything clicked and Newcastle went to the next level, suddenly it is fighting to survive its biggest nightmare.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Fabrizio Romano Confirms Liverpool have Received Huge Alexander Isak Boost
Alexander Isak Eyes Move as Liverpool Maintain Interest Newcastle United's pre-season tour of Singapore has taken a dramatic turn, with star striker Alexander Isak omitted from the travelling squad. While the official club line cites a minor thigh complaint, fresh reporting by Fabrizio Romano strongly suggests there is more to the story. The Italian transfer expert has confirmed that the Swedish international has now formally expressed a desire to explore a move away from St. James' Park this summer. Isak has been training separately at Newcastle's Benton facility, focusing on a personalised sprint and rehabilitation programme. 'Alexander Isak has informed Newcastle of his desire to explore a move this summer. Club aware of player's plans and will now decide how to move, as Craig Hope reports.' This update sheds new light on Isak's situation, particularly in light of Romano's claim that Newcastle are already exploring options for a potential replacement. That proactive search for a new striker implies the Magpies are preparing for life without their top scorer. Liverpool Remain in the Picture Liverpool's interest in Isak has been longstanding, and Romano's update reveals that the club recently made direct contact regarding a possible move. 'Understand Alexander Isak remains a target for Liverpool even after signing Ekitike… but depends on Newcastle.' The Reds, fresh from winning the Premier League title under new boss Arne Slot, appear to be keeping their options open in the forward line. That flexibility seems closely tied to the uncertain future of Luis Diaz, who has attracted attention from several clubs this summer. 'If Newcastle open doors to an exit and LFC sell Diaz, they can bid after direct contact made 10 days ago.' Slot has already strengthened his squad with the acquisition of Hugo Ekitike, but the potential addition of Isak would represent a major statement. At 25, Isak is entering his prime and brings a combination of pace, technique and Premier League experience that fits the Dutchman's attacking blueprint. No Move to Saudi Arabia Despite frequent links between top European talent and Saudi Pro League clubs, Romano has put to bed any suggestion that Isak is currently in talks with Al-Hilal. 'Isak, in concrete talks with Al Hilal so far.' This confirms that the player is focused on remaining within European football's elite competitions. Isak's ambitions appear aligned with clubs that can offer Champions League football and a platform to further elevate his game. What Comes Next? All eyes are now on Newcastle United. With Isak pushing for a move and suitors like Liverpool circling, the club must make a key decision: cash in now and reinvest, or hold firm and risk keeping a player who has one eye elsewhere. The next few weeks will be crucial. Our View – Anfield Index Analysis From a Liverpool supporter's perspective, this is the kind of update that gets the pulse racing. Alexander Isak is not just any striker — he's got that elegant mix of skill, flair and ruthless finishing that makes him a nightmare for defenders. The fact that he's proven himself in the Premier League already only makes him more appealing. There's no adaptation period needed. He's ready. The timing of this is what excites us most. With Arne Slot coming off a sensational title-winning debut season, momentum is everything. Bringing in Isak would not only signal intent, it would raise the squad's ceiling even higher. And if Luis Diaz does leave, it makes perfect sense to invest in a forward who can rotate across the line and give us different attacking profiles. Also, the fact that Liverpool already made direct contact 10 days ago shows there's something tangible here. It's not just paper talk. It feels like one of those classic Anfield recruitment plays — quiet groundwork laid early, ready to strike when the time is right. Should Newcastle soften their stance, this could be one of the biggest moves of the summer. Isak in red at Anfield? Sign us up.
