Although he bears no ill will toward Liverpool, you can only imagine Arne Slot is watching their promising start to this new season cursing his luck.
For all that Andoni Iraola’s first few games in charge have been encouraging in different ways, it doesn’t half help to have a £125m striker available to finish off moves.
And it could be justifiably argued, even at this early stage, that Alexander Isak’s contributions are proving a key difference between this campaign and the last.
The Swede has already netted four Premier League goals this term, eclipsing his debut-season tally of three despite having played just five games.
That is the sort of output that convinced Liverpool to break the British transfer record to bring him to Anfield last summer, yet it is only being delivered 12 months later.
Slot can hardly shoulder the blame for that, having initially been given a half-fit version of Isak due to the protracted and hostile nature of his transfer.
Although they would always say signings are made for the long term, you wonder if Liverpool’s recruitment staff now believe that process could have run more smoothly given the wait still ended in such a huge outlay.
Newcastle, too, are likely to harbour regrets over a hardline stance that was never going to hold and which only created a damaging delay to signing a replacement.
Either way, that slow start would have mattered slightly less had it not been followed by a broken leg suffered at Tottenham once had finally got himself march fit.
Micky van de Ven’s reckless challenge essentially ended any hopes of Isak showing the best version of himself in his first season as a Liverpool player, and perhaps sealed Slot’s fate.
Still, while his successor has had better fortune in terms of the striker’s availability, he is still deserving of credit for capitalising on it.
It says something that despite playing 415 minutes this season to last term’s 703, he is just two shots shy of matching his debut campaign’s overall tally of 17.
The quality of opportunities (3.54xG to 2.6xG) he is receiving has also improved, no doubt as a product of Iraola’s knack for platforming centre-forwards.
In fact, only Erling Haaland is currently bettering him on the latter statistic, and that is the sort of conversation we were used to Isak being in during his time at Newcastle.
Of course, the demanding Iraola remains unsatisfied, and in private has challenged Isak to up his workrate at the top end of the pitch.
