Liverpool’s pursuit of Alexander Isak has become personal for Eddie Howe

As unlikely as it may seem, the relationships at the heart of the transfer saga that has dominated the summer can be traced all the way back to Portsmouth in the early 2000s, when Alexander Isak was just a toddler.

The friendship forged between Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe , Fenway Sports Group’s chief executive of football Michael Edwards , who effectively runs Liverpool, and the club’s sporting director Richard Hughes, may go back two decades, but it appears to have been put under severe strain over Isak’s future.

More on that later, but let us first rewind to December 2008.

A friendship forms

There is a photograph taken at Portsmouth’s training ground in which shows a smiling Sean Davis driving a Reliant Robin that has been modified in the livery of the popular 1980s