ALEXANDER ISAK will surely be thinking that he was too clever for his own good.
Liverpool’s recruitment team must also be wondering if they got their strategy all wrong by haggling so long with Newcastle over the Swedish star’s transfer fee.
The striker — as well as his Reds manager Arne Slot and new club chiefs — are now paying for what look like major misjudgements.
Isak spent the summer on strike to get out of Toon and finally ‘earned’ a British-record £130million move.
But since arriving at Anfield, he has managed just one goal in 12 appearances for club and country.
And even that was against struggling Championship side Southampton in a 2-1 Carabao Cup win two months ago.
The injury issues Slot feared — after the player missed a complete pre-season to force through his exit — duly arrived in the shape of a groin problem that has seen him miss a total of seven games.
His last club appearance was four weeks ago when he limped out of a 5-1 Champions League victory over Eintracht Frankfurt.
So far Isak has played just 655 minutes, averaging only 54 minutes per appearance and managed just two full 90 minutes — both for Sweden.
New national team boss Graham Potter might have helped him up those numbers this week.
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But there was Isak — stone-faced and stone-cold in MINUS 6C in Stockholm — parked as an unused sub in Tuesday night’s 1-1 World Cup dead rubber with Slovenia.
A runout against a side that had also given up the ghost might have done him a power of good and helped get him match fit ahead of the Reds hosting Nottingham Forest tomorrow.
His exclusion, the Scandinavians later explained, was to avoid him risking a ban.
Isak was booked in September’s 2-0 loss to Kosovo, so another yellow card would have ruled him out of their last shot at making next summer’s World Cup.
Despite woefully finishing bottom of their qualifying group, the Swedes can still make it to the finals via March’s play-offs.
Yesterday, they were drawn against Ukraine.
Yet getting minutes into the body seems crucial to finally kickstart his season.
Isak says he is ready for full-on action having played 28 minutes as a sub last weekend in a 4-1 defeat against Switzerland.
Another a decent cameo might have persuaded Slot to start him against Forest.
Instead — as he has been forced to do since Isak walked through the Anfield doors — the Dutchman will have to consider the risks of giving him a go.
He will be desperate to do so after backing Liverpool’s recruitment team, fronted by sporting director Richard Hughes, in getting the hitman.
Isak hit 63 goals in 109 games for Newcastle — becoming one of the world’s most in-demand stars.
The Reds went into the international break on the back of a 3-0 Premier League drubbing by Manchester City.
After wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid, Slot’s side looked as lost again as they had during a previous run of six defeats in seven games.
While Isak has been in the wilderness, fellow new boy Florian Wirtz is also finding the going tough on Merseyside.
Yet excuses can be made for the German playmaker, 22, who signed for an initial £100m from Bayer Leverkusen.
The former Bundesliga man is not the first to find the intensity and physicality of the Prem hard to adapt to.
But Isak had three great years at Newcastle, scoring 54 league goals and notching the clincher in last season’s 2-1 Carabao Cup final triumph against the side he then joined five months later.
There should have been no excuses for him not kicking on in front of the Kop.
Except that he withdrew his services in the build-up to this campaign, training alone at ex-club Real Sociedad in Spain.
Then the Swede was told by Toon boss Eddie Howe to continue to get on with it himself after he first refused to go on their pre-season tour to Singapore.
It took until transfer deadline day on September 1 to seal the move he craved.
And, by then, the player was completely undercooked for the start of his Anfield career.
Had Liverpool not tried to lowball Newcastle — and moved a lot quicker throughout their pursuit of him — Isak should have been able to hit the ground running.
But as SunSport revealed, despite letting rivals know before the end of last term they had Isak in their sights — and with the striker also aware of interest — the situation was allowed to fester for months.
Isak was already on his own in Spain before a first bid of £110m was rejected.
And yet it is understood that Liverpool chiefs were made aware from the start that any offer under a £130m package would be turned down.
Liverpool even played mind games by privately suggesting that they would not be back with a bigger offer.
But SunSport also revealed they would, in fact, meet that asking price — with an initial £125m put down, plus £5m in add-ons.
The champions shot themselves in the foot trying to save a few quid in what would end up becoming a monster £426m summer splurge.
Nor did Isak do himself any favours with his no-travel, no-train, no-play stance.
Had he played ball and carried on with pre-season on Tyneside, the Swede would have been completely fit — and Newcastle would still have got the money they always wanted for him.
The result is when Slot needed his incredible talent the most, Isak has been missing either physically or mentally.
There must also be concerns that because of his groin and general fitness problems, it could be months still before he is back to the stratospheric levels he reached with the Geordies.
The magic touch, the killer eye that made him so precious, has been nowhere in sight.
Unlike £69m fellow new signing Hugo Ekitike, not only is he still awaiting a first Prem goal for his new club, Kop supporters do not even have a proper song for him.
Newcastle fans do. During their side’s 3-2 August defeat to Liverpool, they chanted of him: “He’s half a man, half a rat.”
Slot will hope that Isak can soon morph back into the man who was supposed to lead Liverpool to new glory.
But the wait for that has now taken as long as it did to get him to Anfield in the first place.
