Liverpool rejected Alexander Isak and signed off transfer deal for £1m extra

Liverpool are in the hunt for £150million-rated Alexander Isak, but in many ways their pursuit has come three years too late. The Reds were weighing up a move for the Swedish marksman when he was available for well under half of his current price tag. Ex-Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp had other ideas, though, and in hindsight his decision was a costly misjudgment.

Klopp was on the hunt for a new centre-forward in the summer of 2022 and he had the full financial backing of Anfield bosses to make it happen. As is often the case in modern-day football, transfer decisions rarely boil down to the manager alone, and Klopp was deliberating with a number of other senior figures on Merseyside, including the club's former director of research, Ian Graham.

While some Liverpool chiefs thought that Isak was the man to go for, Klopp's mind was set on Darwin Nunez. The Uruguayan had scored home and away against the Reds for Benfica in a two-legged Champions League clash just weeks before the 2022 summer transfer window opened.

Klopp was unable to shake his hunch and the German got his wish, with Liverpool forking out an initial £64million fee for Nunez as Isak headed to Newcastle in a marginally cheaper £63m deal.

Three years on, the current circumstances tell their own story. Liverpool are weighing up whether to break the bank for Isak, who would command a British record transfer fee. And to make room for him, they are trying to recoup most of their losses on Nunez.

Isak has scored an impressive 54 goals in 86 Premier League games for the Magpies. Liverpool's frontman has a comparatively modest record of 25 in 95.

Graham, who left his senior role at Anfield in 2023, has explained the sequence of events that led to Liverpool choosing Nunez over Isak in an interview with the Financial Times. He said: "Both players, if you look at top young centre-forwards in Europe, they would [have been] number one and two - or two and three but [Erling] Haaland was going to [Manchester] City and out of our price range.

"Jurgen preferred Nunez. It would be very churlish of me to say, 'It's terrible that Jurgen had his choice', when in the past Jurgen had been persuaded by me and my colleagues of a different choice.

"And it was still the case that we signed good players - in Nunez's case, one of the best young strikers in Europe."