Right. Let me get this straight. Alexander Isak returns to team training after an injury and the headline says it's a "boost for Liverpool." A boost for Liverpool. The man plays for Newcastle United. He wears black and white. He scores goals at St James' Park. But apparently his fitness is primarily good news for the team trying to catch him on a Saturday afternoon.

That's the problem with modern football. A player can't even do a light jog on a Thursday morning without someone making it about one of the big clubs.

Now look. I understand the context. Sweden have got matches coming up and Liverpool have got Isak on their radar. Everyone knows that. My nan knows that and she's been dead since 2014. But the sheer brass neck of framing a Newcastle player's return to fitness as a Liverpool story tells you everything about where we are in 2026.

In my day, if your best striker came back from injury, your fans celebrated. Your local paper ran the story. Your chairman had a smile on his face for the first time since the audit. Nobody in another city popped champagne because it meant they might be able to buy him in the summer.

I managed a lad once at Barrow. Cracking little winger. Quick feet, could beat a man, couldn't pass to save his life but that's beside the point. He twisted his ankle in training on a Wednesday. By Friday, Carlisle were on the phone asking about his availability. Not his match availability. His transfer availability. He wasn't even fit and they were circling like vultures. I told them where to go. Words I can't repeat on a family website.

That's exactly what this feels like. Isak has been absolutely sensational this season. Twenty goals before this injury layoff. The most complete striker in the Premier League and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. And yet every single time his name comes up, it's followed by the words "Liverpool" or "transfer" or "release clause" like the man doesn't have a job already.

Newcastle fans must be absolutely fuming. You finally get a world class number nine. A proper goalscorer. The real deal. And every time he ties his bootlaces the national media starts writing his farewell piece.

Don't get me started on the Sweden angle either. Oh lovely, he's fit for international duty. Great. So he can go and play two friendlies, run himself into the ground on some frozen pitch in Scandinavia, and come back to Newcastle with a tight hamstring just in time for the run in. Every manager's dream, that.

I used to dread international breaks. Absolute dread. You'd send a player off perfectly fit on a Monday, he'd come back on a Thursday with a mystery knock and a suntan he definitely didn't get in Warsaw. Criminal, it was.

But back to the main point. Alexander Isak is a Newcastle player. He scores Newcastle goals. He wears Newcastle's shirt. And until a deal is done and a fee is paid and he walks through somebody else's door, that's the end of it.

The fact that his return to a light training session gets packaged as good news for Liverpool tells you everything about the media landscape. Nobody cares about the club a player actually represents anymore. They only care about the club he might represent next.

Newcastle have built something proper up there. Eddie Howe or whoever's in charge next has done a job. And the least the football world can do is let them enjoy their best striker without turning every physio report into a transfer update.

Let the lad train. Let him get fit. Let him score goals for the club that actually pays his wages. And let Liverpool sort out their own striker situation without hijacking someone else's injury bulletin.

Honestly. The state of it all.