Viktor Gyokeres was bought to address some very simple issues for Arsenal. On the one hand, the squad needed to boost its headcount in attack. Gabriel Jesus’ injury left Mikel Arteta with one recognised centre-forward in Kai Havertz and Arsenal needed to buy another simply to avoid the scenario where they were repurposing central midfielders as strikers for three months of the season.
Jesus and Havertz are moderate goal scorers (and one of them is injured anyway) and Arsenal simply needed more players capable of putting the ball in the onion bag, they drew 14 league games last season and you have to think another centre-forward option would have turned some of those draws into victories.
Arsenal also required some different attributes in the centre-forward area. In very different ways, Jesus and Havertz like to come towards to the midfield and / or wide areas and play. Jesus did not play at centre-forward until he was 19, he is naturally a winger and plays like one. Havertz is more of an advanced midfielder and also plays like one when played upfront.
Viktor Gyokeres has not been rewired or refurbished as a striker. Being a striker is firmly embedded into his software. He wants to run in behind, occupy defenders and he wants to Hulk smash the ball at goal at every opportunity. There is little sophistication to his game and Arsenal were a team who, at times last season, veered too much into chin stroking when putting teams under pressure.
However, signing this sort of striker is rarely straightforward. Quite often, you do lose something in the mix, their goal threat often comes with a tariff on your approach play. When Arsene Wenger relented to Thierry Henry’s public pressure to buy a ‘fox in the box’ and purchased Francis Jeffers from Everton in 2001, he said, somewhat unconvincingly, ‘we have bought Jeffers for those tough away games at Newcastle and Southampton.’
I think you can tell that Wenger was never totally bought into the idea of a ‘fox in the box’ but gave it a whirl anyway, maybe in deference to one of his star player’s more poetic moans. Newcastle came within a hair’s breadth of winning the league in 1995-96 and signed Alan Shearer for a world record deal in the summer of 1996.
Shearer scored an enormous amount of goals and became a club legend but Newcastle didn’t challenge for the title again. Likewise, when Arsenal signed Ian Wright in 1991; they were reigning champions and didn’t compete for the league title again until 1997-98 when Nicolas Anelka started to take over.
Manchester United won one league title during Ruud van Nistelrooy’s five-year stint at Old Trafford. As soon as he departed, they won three league titles in a row and a Champions League with a carousel of Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez upfront. There is a very complex balance between a striker that serves a team and a team that serves a striker.
How Arsenal tread that line with Gyokeres will be fascinating. My own opinion has always been that Gyokeres and Havertz will operate the number 9 role in tandem (and I still suspect a fully fit Havertz would start there more often than Gyokeres). Quite simply, Arsenal could probably have bought the Swede earlier had they wanted to. Alexandre Isak would have been the ‘franchise’ striker and I don’t think that is what Gyokeres is.
I think the intention is probably that he is a very trusted option, maybe even a centre-forward equivalent of Leo Trossard. Havertz’s early season knee injury has meant that Gyokeres has had to play and he has had to play a lot too. Zubimendi and Gabriel are the only outfield players to play more minutes than Gyokeres for Arsenal this season.
In one respect, that is very good for Gyokeres in the long-term, it ought to speed up his acclimatisation and the team’s acclimatisation towards him. At 27, this is simply a move that has to work to a good level for Arsenal because there is to be no resale here. He currently has three goals from 3.9XG this season (or two non-penalty goals from 3.1 NPXG).
He can certainly look clunky in possession and his first touch is not always silk. Sometimes he adds real value as a battering ram, drawing enemy radar towards him and allowing space for the wide players and attacking midfielders to find the gaps around him. Just as often, he looks a little lost and anonymous.
Fatigue will be a factor, as will adaptation. Arsenal are bedding in quite a lot of new players around him in the likes of Eze, Madueke and Zubimendi so the automation isn’t quite automating in attack. However, my suspicion is that his technical flaws are very unlikely to iron out. He is 27, he is not going to change very much, the hope is that as chemistry builds; he can elevate his level.
I suspect Gyokeres wasn’t really intended to be the ‘all weather’ striker he has had to be in Havertz’s absence, I think he was supposed to be more of a tool in the toolbox. Don’t get me wrong, a useful, versatile tool, like a hammer or a saw. But in the absence of the Goldilocks striker, Arteta will try to operate with two sides of the striker coin in Havertz and Gyokeres, deploying their specific skillsets according to the situation.
In my heart of hearts, I suspect that Arteta doesn’t see a player like Gyokeres in his perfect team playing his perfect football. But perfection is rare and during a season, there will be plenty of times when you need to clock in and grind out. Your paintbrushes aren’t going to be much use when there is a leak in the roof.
The skill of the coach is going to be deploying Gyokeres’ qualities when required without him becoming another Francis Jeffers- a failure of concept. I don’t think Gyokeres is going to be Erling Haaland or Thierry Henry and I suspect that Arteta doesn’t think he will either. If he can be useful in a wide enough range of scenarios, I think that will yield success given the other qualities and talents that Arsenal have in attack.
