Alexander Isak Shines in Liverpool's Premier League Victory

Alexander Isak finally walked into Liverpool life like a £125m centre-forward should – by ripping a newly promoted side apart inside nine minutes.

Ipswich Town never recovered. Portman Road crackled at kick-off on Friday night, but the noise had gone by the time Isak’s second goal hit the net. Liverpool were 2-0 up, cruising to their first Premier League win of the season and handing Andoni Iraola his first victory since replacing the sacked Arne Slot. The rest of the evening felt like a training exercise.

Yes, the context matters. Ipswich were brave, tried to play, but this is a team that conceded five at Manchester United last weekend. Against serious attacking quality, they look wide open. Liverpool provided that quality in ruthless bursts rather than relentless waves – and that was enough.

The £125m striker finally looks worth the fight

This was the night Isak looked like the footballer Liverpool were convinced they were getting when they smashed the British transfer record to prise him from Newcastle United in an acrimonious move last summer.

For most of his first season, he resembled a cautionary tale. He arrived out of shape after forcing his way off Tyneside, then stumbled through a campaign disfigured by injuries and poor form. His price tag became a punchline, his performances a symbol of a title defence that fell to pieces and dragged Slot out of the door barely a year after he lifted the Premier League trophy.

The numbers were brutal. Twenty-two games, 1,033 minutes, four goals. In the league, 14 appearances, 703 minutes, three goals – one every 234 minutes. For a club that had just paid a record fee, it was damning.

He has already matched last season’s league tally. That matters. But what mattered more at Portman Road was the way he did it, and the way he carried himself. The shoulders were back, the runs were sharp, the finishing was cold. Liverpool have been trying to crack the Isak code for a year. This looked very close to the answer.

Iraola used him exactly as Newcastle once did: on the shoulder, running in behind, pressing with pace rather than acting as a static reference point. That version of Isak was a nightmare in black and white stripes. In red, on Friday night, he looked just as menacing.

Gakpo the architect, almost lost to Manchester City

He did not do it alone. Cody Gakpo, who could easily have spent this weekend preparing for Manchester City’s game against Coventry City at Etihad Stadium, stitched the whole thing together.

Gakpo was ready to join Enzo Maresca’s City rebuild. The deal never happened. Liverpool could not land Yankuba Minteh from Brighton or Ismaila Sarr from Crystal Palace, and the Dutchman stayed put. It already feels like a sliding-doors moment.

Against Ipswich, Gakpo produced the kind of creative performance that makes a transfer saga look faintly ridiculous in hindsight. By the ninth minute, his fingerprints were on a game that was essentially done.

On six minutes, he threaded a clever pass between Leif Davis and Jacob Greaves, inviting Isak to burst into the gap. The Swede did the rest, thundering a right-foot shot that carried too much power for Kjell Scherpen. The Ipswich goalkeeper helped it in with a weak attempt to parry, but the intent from Isak was unmistakable: hit it hard, hit it early, hit it clean.

Three minutes later came the move that will live longer in the memory.

From inside his own half, Gakpo shaped his body and sliced a delicious outside-of-the-right-foot pass into space. Isak glided onto it, flicking the ball with his left to step inside Greaves as Scherpen rushed out. One touch with his right sent the keeper the wrong way, another with his left rolled the ball in with casual precision.

From Gakpo’s audacity to Isak’s composure, it was perfection. And it was game over.

From lost soul to ruthless finisher

Isak’s start to this campaign has not been flawless. He endured a miserable return to Tyneside on the opening day and even his goal in the 2-2 draw with Nottingham Forest prompted questions about his all-round contribution.

This, though, was the full package. The running, the pressing, the timing of his movements – all aligned with the lethal finishing Liverpool thought they had bought.

Iraola was clear about the scale of the player at his disposal. “He's a massive player for us,” he said. The Liverpool manager spoke of fitness, shape, and his belief that the goals will come naturally. His battle with Isak, he suggested, will be about everything else – the dirty work, the decisions, the contributions that do not show up in the scoring charts. For now, two full games and three league goals feel like a strong starting point.

Isak himself sounded like a man relieved as much as satisfied. “We were waiting for the first win,” he admitted. Liverpool had talked about starting well, something they had failed to do in recent games. Two quick goals, he said, were “perfect”.

A normal pre-season, he argued, has changed everything. The plan is simple: be offensive, attack defences, keep the pressure on. “We scored two, and we could have scored more,” he pointed out. On this evidence, that was not bravado.

He did not shy away from the past either. Last season, he said, “was not easy”. A long injury, a difficult year, a World Cup he had targeted as a launchpad. That never quite materialised. “It's kind of behind me,” he reflected. “But it wasn't easy.”

Portman Road, at least, offers a kinder chapter. Since the start of the 2024-25 season, Isak’s five Premier League goals there are the joint-most by any player at a single away ground, level with Erling Haaland’s five at Selhurst Park against Crystal Palace. For a striker accused of being a luxury, that is a serious away-day habit.

Gakpo’s renaissance and Van Dijk’s relief

If Isak carried the headlines, Gakpo quietly underlined his own resurgence.

He, too, drifted through last season without ever quite hitting his stride. This campaign, his form has spiked. Against Ipswich, he did far more than chalk up two assists. He dictated tempo, dropped into pockets, linked play, and repeatedly turned defence into attack with one touch.

Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk, his compatriot and dressing-room ally, did not hide his satisfaction that Gakpo is still in red. “It's massive,” Van Dijk said of his continued presence. He called Gakpo “important for us” and insisted that importance will only grow across the season. The defender referenced this display, last week’s performance, and the last couple of years as proof of his value. The message was simple: keep going.

The same applies, with even greater urgency, to Isak.

Iraola’s challenge: make sure this isn’t a one-night revival

Bradley Barcola’s debut – 26 minutes of raw, blistering pace after his £123m move from Paris St-Germain – would normally dominate a storyline on its own. On any other night, the Frenchman’s cameos down the flank would be the big takeaway for Iraola.

Here, he was a side note.

Isak owned the stage. Gakpo controlled the script. Liverpool walked away with three points, a first league win, a manager off the mark and a sense that their most expensive signing finally resembles the player they thought they were buying.

Iraola knows the danger. English football has seen too many “statement” performances that fade into nothing. He cannot afford this to be another false dawn for a talent of Isak’s calibre.

If this is the new normal rather than a one-off, Liverpool’s season has just taken on a very different shape.