After 26 matchdays, the Premier League goalscoring leaderboard looks quite familiar. At the top is Mohamed Salah, Liverpool's star winger who is in the midst of what could wind up being the best attacking season in league history, with 25 goals and 16 assists while still in February. Next comes Erling Haaland, who has been able to notch 19 goals despite some injury trouble and Manchester City's whole deal. But third is a bit of a surprise, if only because Newcastle United's Alexander Isak has put it all together to become (depending on how one feels about Haaland) arguably the best striker in the Premier League.
This weekend tilted the balance of striker power in the direction of the Swedish forward. While Haaland was out injured as Liverpool beat City 2-0, Isak earned man of the match honors during Newcastle's nervy 4-3 victory against fellow top-four contenders Nottingham Forest. Newcastle is a bit of a mystery this season, capable of ugly losses (its last three were a 4-0 defeat to City, a 2-1 loss to Fulham, and 4-1 loss to Bournemouth, the latter two both at home) and also of soaring victories against the best teams in the country.
Somehow, Sunday's home match against Forest was Newcastle at both its worst and its high-flying best. I'll knock out the former pattern first: Giving up the opener at home in the sixth minute is not what any team wants, and Forest has proven that it can smack around unprepared opponents; see its 7-0 win over Brighton earlier this month. Later on, after Newcastle had grabbed the match by the throat with four straight goals in 11 minutes, Forest was able to dominate the second half and bring the score to 4-3 before time ran out on a comeback. This wasn't Newcastle's steadiest performance, but thanks in large part to Isak, it still came with three all-important points on a weekend where everyone between second and fifth place on the table heading in lost.
Isak wasn't involved in the first Newcastle goal, coming from a free kick after a perhaps phantom foul which eventually led to a Lewis Miley equalizer, but the Swede was all-important on the following three goals. First, Isak showed off his ability outside of the box, receiving the ball with his back to the center of the park before knocking on a backheel into the path of Lewis Hall, whose deflected cross took a fortuitous bounce directly into Jacob Murphy's path to set up a tap-in.
A few minutes later it was Isak's turn to get on the scoresheet after an Ola Aina hand ball gifted Newcastle a penalty. Isak coolly stepped up and slammed a shot hard, high, and down the middle of the goal, knocking the ball and also Forest goalie Matz Sels himself into the back of the net.
Just a minute later, Isak was at it again, getting on the end of a quick move down the length of the pitch and hitting a first-time shot across the goal that got a helpful deflection on its way over Sels and over the goal line:
That goal was his 50th in the Premier League since his 2022 move from Real Sociedad to the newly rich Newcastle. Those 50 goals put Isak similarly in third place on the scoring list since the start of the 2022-23 season, behind Salah's 62 and Haaland's absurd 82. Even if Isak tops out as the second-most productive striker in the league once Haaland gets healthy enough to return to his goal-thrashing ways, he has been more than worth his club-record €70 million fee.
Isak's regularity has been a godsend for the otherwise inconsistent Magpies, who are still in the thick of a fierce battle for the league's Champions League spots. It's not as simple as saying "if Isak scores, Newcastle wins," but he's scored in key victories over teams like Arsenal, Tottenham (twice), Manchester United, in both matches against Forest, and also in a 3-3 draw against Liverpool in December. In fact, Newcastle has only lost twice this season when Isak has scored, against Brentford and Chelsea, so it really might as simple as "if Isak scores, Newcastle wins" in the end.
But the striker's game isn't only limited to scoring. Among forwards in the Premier League, Isak's five assists tie him for eighth, though the players ahead of him are all wingers who have the ball on their feet more often. Even outside of the penalty box, the Swede's speed, movement, hold-up-play, soft feet, and passing ability make him a constant source of superiority in any situation and from anywhere on the pitch. There is no striker in England better at helping his team get the ball into dangerous territory and then converting those possessions into goals than Newcastle's no. 14, and that forms the crux of the case for why he has been better than Haaland this season.
While Isak can go on cold streaks like any striker—before Sunday, he had scored just two goals in his last six matches across all competitions, both coming in a match against lowly Southampton—the former wunderkind has developed all of his world-class potential into world-class performance, at the times when his club has needed that most. He's the best player on a team with real Champions League aspirations, and he's soon to be a two-time 20-goal scorer in the Premier League, a feat usually reserved for all-time greats, like Salah, or freaks of nature, like Haaland. It's time to start thinking which of those buckets Isak falls into going forward, because there is no indication that his barrage on English goals will slow down any time soon.
