Alexander Isak's demands are causing a delay in Newcastle star signing new contract

A new contract for Newcastle United's star striker Alexander Isak has been on the table for a while now but there's still no sign of the Sweden international putting pen to paper.

Back in April it was reported that Isak was mulling over a new contract at Newcastle and six months later we're no closer to that being a reality.

Anthony Gordon has penned a new contract with Newcastle and Bruno Guimaraes committed his future to the club last year, so adding Isak to the list of players on big new contracts seems like the right thing to do.

However, there are a couple of things that appear to be stalling progress on Isak's deal according to TalkSPORT.

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Isak's current deal runs to summer 2028

Alexander Isak is under contract with Newcastle until 2028 so it's not a race against time to get the deal signed, but the longer talks drag on the more it could unsettle Isak.

Arsenal retain an interest in signing Isak from Newcastle and will no doubt be watching on with interest to see what the outcome of the contract stand-off will be.

Isak is the latest player to demand to become the club's highest earner, an honour which currently belongs to Bruno Guimaraes (or Anthony Gordon depending on where you get your information). He is also demanding a release clause be put in his contract, again, something that will definitely pique Arsenal's interest.

Isak has shown no indication that he wants to leave Newcastle

Hopefully the club will do a similar thing with Isak as they did with Bruno's release clause - set it so high that it won't hurt too much that we've lost him, but also put a clock on it for a time when club's have very little free cash thus making it practically impossible for anyone to activate it.

We would definitely suggest that Isak's clause be set higher than £100 million just in case. If we're going to lose him to another club we want to make sure we're more than adequately compensated.

For now there's no need to panic over the new deal taking a bit of time to put together. Indeed, the lack of a release clause in his current deal plays to our advantage. There's also no suggestion that Isak wants to leave Newcastle, so we can relax for now.