Should you sign Liverpool's Alexander Isak - or sell Hugo Ekitike? FPL dilemmas solved

For Newcastle United fans, Alexander Isak’s record-breaking £125m transfer to Liverpool may have been the unedifying end to a bruising saga – but for Fantasy Premier League players, it’s just the start of a £10.4m decision-making process.

Once the international break is done and dusted, the Swede will be available for selection not only to Arne Slot but to millions of FPL managers. Isak was the highest-scoring forward in the game last season, and has been priced accordingly – but should you sign him for you team? And how will his presence affect players like Cody Gakpo and Hugo Ekitike?

As 3 Added Minutes’ resident FPL expert it’s my job to work out if and when you should add Isak to your side

Should you sign Liverpool’s Alexander Isak in FPL?

At first glance, it’s pretty tempting to slot Isak into your team at the first opportunity – after all, his 211 points last season was more than any other striker in the game, and signing the highest-scoring players is generally a pretty solid start to your plan.

There’s also little evidence that he won’t maintain his scoring rate for the foreseeable future. Although he ‘only’ managed 172 points in the 2023/24 season, that was largely due to playing fewer minutes – he still scored 21 goals to last year’s 23, and collected four assists to last year’s six, with seven fewer starts.

In short, all the stats suggest that whenever he’s fit and playing, he’s going to score more points than any other forward in the game save, perhaps, for Erling Haaland, and even the robotic Norwegian couldn’t outscore him last season.

The case for Isak, then, is pretty straightforward – he may come across as being rather less mechanical than Haaland, but he’s just as much of a goal machine (and by extension points machine).

The argument against is all about the economy. While Isak was a 211-point player priced at £10.4m (after a price drop) other strikers who will come relatively close cost quite a bit less. Chris Wood, for instance, hit 200 points and comes in at £7.7m now, while Ollie Watkins (186 points) is down at £8.9m.

Then there’s the massively high ceiling on Viktor Gyökeres at £9.0m – all forwards who only need to be close to Isak’s total points per week to be better buys simply because they’ll help you to spend money elsewhere. João Pedro is another example, based on early-season form.

So you actually shouldn’t sign Isak if it’s pinching your spending elsewhere, which it most likely will, and in general I’d say it’s an actively bad idea to buy the Swede when you can get more bang for your buck from other players.

This season may, however, offer an exception to that logic. There are so many cheap midfield enablers who have started strongly (Moisés Caicedo, Dan Ndoye, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and so on) that it actually becomes way easier than normal to buy multiple premium players without costing yourself too many points. Those trends need to continue for Isak to be the right signing, but there’s a reason my proposed wildcard team for Gameweek 4 managed to fit both Mohamed Salah and Haaland in. Isak fits into the same framework.

So there’s a much stronger argument for signing Isak now than there would have been before the season, regardless of his extended transfer saga. But the other question is – will he actually play 90 minutes from the start?

Will Isak play for Liverpool – and will his arrival affect Hugo Ekitike and Cody Gakpo?

Arne Slot hasn’t showed too much hesitation in putting new signings into his starting line-ups straight away, although there’s clearly a difference between using players like Florian Wirtz and Milos Kerkez from week one after a full pre-season and dropping Isak right into the thick of things.

Isak hadn’t played or trained fully for around six weeks before joining up with Jon Dahl Tomasson’s Sweden squad, and while the international break should help him get back up to speed, it’s certainly reasonable to wait a week or two before signing him for your FPL team. If he plays a full 90 minutes from the first week, however, his price will move up quickly, so don’t wait for long if you do decide to bring him in.

It doesn’t help Isak’s case for instant minutes that Ekitike has had a good start to the season, and it’s not all that easy to see how the two could both play at the same time – there has been speculation that Ekitike, who has an extremely similar playing profile to Isak, could play wide left, but it’s worth noting that he’s has only made four career appearances as a winger thus far.

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If that is indeed the plan, then Isak’s arrival will also impact the minutes that Gakpo gets, with knock-on effects for many of his owners – should the Dutchman become a rotational player again, then it’s likely other players at a similar price point such as Bryan Mbeumo will quickly become much better long-term inclusions.

In reality, no team spends £125m to bench a player. Then again, Ekitike wasn’t much cheaper. There will be some rotation of some very expensive players, and owners of Gakpo and Ekitike should probably be prepared to jump ship quickly. Ekitike is probably the more likely of the two to suffer.

For Gameweek 4, I don’t think anyone should be making any moves, in or out, with Liverpool’s attacking assets – but things will change quickly, and Isak could suddenly become a very good buy while Gakpo and (especially) Ekitike become far less valuable.