Alexander Isak left a final “thanks for the memories” in the Newcastle United whatsapp group, to be met with all “positive” messages from those who responded, Dan Burn has revealed. The England centre-half even said the controversy brought his club squad “closer” together, as he added there was no “animosity” towards the new Liverpool striker.
Isak’s desire to leave Newcastle for Anfield formed the saga of the summer, and it has been reported that some players were “let down” by the situation. Burn nevertheless illustrated a pragmatic view, even if, “as a Newcastle fan”, he wanted Isak to stay.
“He put a message in the chat just saying that he was leaving, and thanks for the memories, all that sort of stuff, and the lads replied,” said Burn.
“But as I said, I think Alex is getting what he wants, and now we’ve just got to focus and do what we can with the players that we’ve got.”
Asked whether all of the messages were positive, Burn said “yeah, of course!” He does believe Newcastle are in a stronger place after the signings of Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa.
“It brought us closer, really. I think it can be frustrating at times, because everything was so positive last season, so that took a little bit of a shine off.
“But I’m not silly, I’ve been around football a long time now, and people have short careers, and they want to max out absolutely everything they can, so there’s no hard feelings from me, and as I said, I think we’ve got two good players in that position now, which will hopefully fill up the goals that we’ve lost.
“If you look at the whole of our transfer window, we’ve bought well, got players in the positions that we wanted to get them in — I think that’s the thing that we probably need to learn from the last time we were in the Champions League, we probably didn’t have that depth that we needed and suffered for it. So I think the club’s invested well.”
While the Isak saga is seen as having disrupted Newcastle’s summer, Burn says it’s nothing they’re not used to.
“I think there’s always something at Newcastle, disruption-wise, the year before it was losing Elliot [Anderson] on PSR and things like that.
“If we look at our transfer window, I think it’s been pretty good, to be honest: we’ve got good players now, depth in every position, and a lot to look forward to.
“It’s only natural, Alex is probably one of the best three strikers in the world at the moment, and as a Newcastle fan personally, obviously, you’d love him to want to stay, but I know that’s football, and there’s players who’ve come and gone from Newcastle before.
“Alex is my mate at the end of the day, so it was a tough situation, but I’m glad that we’re getting a good return on a player that we’ve had, and he’s getting the move that he wanted.
“But it doesn’t stop, Newcastle does not stop, just because we’ve lost a player, who’d been in this situation before, and it’s probably the same for other clubs.”
Speaking on the eve of England’s World Cup qualifier against Andorra at Villa Park, Burn said that Thomas Tuchel’s squad had naturally discussed it all, given that they all met up the day after the transfer window closed.
“Well in this camp, yeah I think you speak about it, because with the lads here, there have been lots of different situations with transfers. But when you’ve been in football, as long as the majority of us have, you realise that’s just the way it works, there’ll be sort of players who are wanting to get out, and clubs who are wanting to keep hold of the players.”
Burn was similarly asked about Marc Guehi, who did not agitate for a move, despite the desire to go to Liverpool. The Newcastle man praised his international centre-half partner, although stopped short of comparing to Isak.
“Marc’s a captain of Palace, and he’s a very chill guy, so I don’t think that’ll affect him majorly, I don’t think it’s affected his situation.
“He’s gone into the last year of his contract, so I haven’t spoken about it, but I don’t think it’s a major change for him, but yeah, Marc, is the ultimate professional, I wouldn’t expect his attitude to change anywhere, whether it’s at England camp, or when he gets back to Palace.”
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