Exactly? Really?! Where you rank Alexander Isak among the world's best is a matter of personal opinion but when it was pointed out that the Sweden star was putting himself in the conversation while playing for Newcastle United, pundit Jamie O'Hara sneered: "Exactly."

O'Hara inferred that scoring goals for Newcastle was, somehow, not quite as impressive as what Lautaro Martinez and others have done - even though Isak could have even greater service elsewhere.

This is not a side languishing in the bottom half, though. Newcastle are just three points off third place and Eddie Howe's side are only 90 minutes away from another shot at making history at Wembley.

READ MORE: End of Newcastle United transfer window set to be impacted by Chelsea and West Ham United

READ MORE: Marcus Rashford's Man Utd bust-up could hold key to late Newcastle transfer twist

No wonder Isak has had the 'best feeling' of his career on Tyneside. It was just last month that Isak said 'playing for a club like Newcastle United with a fan base like they have here is extra special'.

The challenge for Newcastle, of course, is to keep pushing forward and to keep apace with the ambition of their stars, but Isak has certainly relished the platform the club have given him. In fact, no one in the Premier League has bagged more goals (13) since the start of December. Isak has been scoring a goal at a rate of every 65 minutes during the run. Of those players to take at least five shots, Isak has the best shot conversion rate (42%) in the division.

This is not a random purple patch, either. Only Alan Shearer has plundered more Premier League goals for Newcastle despite Isak joining the club just two-and-a-half years ago and the Sweden international missing a number of games through injury. It is obviously a smaller sample size, but Isak's goals per match ratio (0.66) is even better than Shearer's (0.49).

To say it has been £63m well spent would be an understatement yet it is easy to forget Isak's superb goal return was far from a foregone conclusion. Isak had only scored seven goals in his final season at Real Sociedad, which put some of his long-term suitors off, and the established order looked elsewhere.

Arsenal signed Gabriel Jesus while Chelsea moved for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. A year later, Manchester United shelled out an initial £64m plus £8m in add-on another Scandinavian striker, Rasmus Hojlund.

If ever you needed a reminder that spending big on a striker offers no guarantees. Hojlund, after all, has scored just 12 league goals since joining the Red Devils and his all-round play was so poor against Fulham at the weekend that Newcastle legend Shay Given remarked the number nine was a 'million miles off it'. Isak, in contrast, has been very much on it since Newcastle smashed the club's transfer record to sign him.

"In his last season there, he didn't score a huge amount of goals, but I could see in his general play that he was an outstanding footballer," Howe said at the weekend. "The only question was could he score again because he had scored a lot the previous season.

"Pretty much since day one he has been a regular scorer for us and that has no doubt helped his self-belief. His general confidence when he enters the pitch seems really high at the moment and that's not a given. You have to earn that through your training and he's been outstanding this year but the challenge for him is to continue to get better."

That is a scary prospect. If Isak is not already there, the striker is well on the way to becoming a world-class footballer after finding the perfect stage at Newcastle.