Shaka Hislop has criticised one Newcastle United player for his lack of fitness in the defeat to AC Milan last night.
After going ahead in the first half, Newcastle’s Champions League dreams were shattered partly thanks to some tired legs from Alexander Isak against Milan.
On the ESPN FC podcast, Hislop was concerned about Isak’s lack of fitness with the striker looking very tired despite only playing the last 30 minutes of the game.
Isak may have cost Newcastle Europa League football
Since arriving in the summer of 2022, Isak has been an incredible striker for Newcastle and at times has been considered to be the second-best striker in the league behind Erling Haaland, at least when he’s fit.
But the problem remains that for some reason we’re yet to see the Swedish international playing to the best of his abilities for a full 90 minutes because of his lack of fitness.
Against Milan, the 24-year-old came off the bench for Anthony Gordon which seemed to take the sting out of Newcastle’s attack a little bit because Isak didn’t look like he could match the pace of the game.
At 1-1, Milan had the opportunity to break through midfield after capitalising on a Newcastle mistake. Rather than bring the player down and receive a yellow card on the half-way line, Isak was leisurely jogging back towards his own goal, which eventually resulted in Milan going ahead and Newcastle crashing out of Europe.
On the podcast, Hislop said: “The second goal came as Schar goes on the overlap and nobody covers and Newcastle were stretched.
“In a game that, yes you want to win, but you also don’t want to take those chances and find yourself out of it completely.
“From there I thought a foul could have been committed, again some naivety and a lack of experience by Guimaraes and Isak who was running on empty even though he just came off the bench.”
Isak has to improve his fitness in the second half of the season
Isak was playing his best football when he returned from injury during last year’s campaign and was rotating with Callum Wilson every game so he was able to give it his all before being subbed off.
That was back when Newcastle were typically playing once a week and had both strikers fit and healthy, but as we’ve seen in the last few weeks, the forward cannot cope with the high intensity style of play in consecutive games.
It would be a tough ask for anyone and nobody is demanding Isak to be superhuman and sprint around for the full 90 minutes, but his lack of fitness even at the beginning of games is starting to become a concern.
For Eddie Howe, he has to find a way to bring the striker back up to full fitness and possibly explore the January market for another goalscorer to ease the pressure off of Isak and allow him to rotate with his attacking teammates once again.
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