Viktor Gyokeres feels increasingly like a square peg

The older you get, the more you realise that life serves you few absolutes. Contradicting facts and themes can be simultaneously accurate. Football is much the same. Arsenal would not have won the league without Viktor Gyokeres and his goals last season. Especially in light of the long-term injury to Kai Havertz- compounded by an injury to emergency option Mikel Merino in the second half of the season.

Gyokeres became a crucial player by necessity. He had to adjust to a new team and a new league while cradling Arsenal’s title hopes on his shoulders. His scoring record in Portugal marked him as a flat track bully with the majority of his goals coming against teams in the bottom half of the table.

There was justifiable anxiety about how much beating up on some pretty low-quality fare in the Portuguese league would translate to the Premier League. But, in the end, it translated pretty directly. Gyokeres scored 11 open play goals in the Premier League last season. Here is a list of the Premier League teams he scored against (penalties not included):

Leeds (H), Nottingham Forest (H), Burnley (a), Leeds (a), Sunderland (H) x2, Spurs (a) x2, Everton (H), Fulham (H) x2. The goals against Sunderland were the only ones he netted against opposition that finished in the top half (he scored a penalty at home to Bournemouth).

On top of that, in open play in the Champions League, he scored two from the bench at home to Atleti, as well as goals against Inter (a) and Kairat (H). Only Kairat at home was scored when the game was level. He notched away at Southampton in the FA Cup and away at Chelsea in the EFL Cup. It is not the most illustrious list of opponents. However, in 2024-25, Arsenal drew 14 league games.

Two draws against Brighton, draws against Everton, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Brentford and Crystal Palace. Superficially, you could say that Arsenal had an issue with breaking these games open, or else putting sufficient distance on the scoreboard and Gyokeres was instrumental in fixing that leak.

It is difficult to quibble with that statement. However, the eye test told you that Arsenal often looked clunky and disjointed with Gyokeres upfront and that, too often, his presence saw Arsenal’s attacks fall into a black hole. His signing was largely welcomed as the sort of signing that Arsenal had missed for some years and I can certainly see some truth in that.

It is true that the Arsenal squad lacks players for whom goal scoring is their main priority. ‘Finally, someone to get on the end of things!’ was a plaintive cry from many sectors. However, I have always found this to be overly simplistic. Helping to generate chances, retaining the ball in high value areas, provide nuisance factor to opposing centre-halves- all these things are required of a striker to generate chances in the first place.

The idea that you can just ‘sit’ a striker in the penalty area, absent him from the buildup and expect to generate the same number of chances clearly does not work in practice. The best teams and the best attacks are not necessarily the most clinical but the ones that generate the highest number of incidents and exert the most dominance. Attacking is a game of volume. Most chances are missed; you have to create a high number of them.

There were eight games across the Premier League and Champions League that Gyokeres started last season where he did not take a shot at goal. There were a further 11 starts across those two competitions where he took one shot. That’s 19 starts with fewer than two shots. There were far too many games where he was a total bystander.

Even his staunchest defenders would not describe him as a highly involved or especially technically gifted player. The payoff for a striker that contributes little to build up is supposed to be a lot of goals. Haaland is the poster boy for this, of course. But even players like Barca era Lewandowksi or Aubameyang, whom we saw in close quarters at Arsenal, are not highly involved but get enough chances and score enough goals to at least make you contemplate the trade-off.

Gyokeres cost around £55m. In today’s Premier League economy, that amounts to a backup striker. As soon as Kai Havertz’s knee functioned again last spring, he was straight back into the starting line-up. Havertz started away at Manchester City and in the Champions League Final and those, my friends, are the games for your life, where the manager really shows you who his guys are.

There ought to be a role for everyone, of course, but when push comes to shove you see the hierarchy in team selection. Gyokeres was, I am fairly sure, intended to be ‘an option’ who was quickly promoted to more than that due to injury to Havertz. Last summer, Arsenal showed interest in Benjamin Sesko, who feels more Havertz adjacent, but in their summer 2025 quest to ‘win now’, they opted for Gyokeres due to his experience and scoring track record.

I don’t mind saying I think that was a short-sighted decision, even if I understand why it was made. This season, Gyokeres did not come off the bench for the first two games of the season. He came on against Chelsea and I have to admit I was immediately frustrated by the decision. Arsenal were protecting a lead and Gyokeres’ hold-up play is, forgive my frankness, non-existent.

He cannot act as a pressure valve in these situations. I think one of my chief frustrations with the player is that he has an incredible physique but just doesn’t seem to know how to use it. I accept his technical limitations, he is 28, you can’t reverse engineer that. But I would like to see so much more nuisance factor from him.

He has the physique to at least move some defenders around and make their lives difficult. We did see it on occasion last season too, away at Newcastle last September, for instance, I thought he was really good at getting his back into defenders and absorbing blows while his teammates arrived in support. But these examples feel like the exception that proves the rule.

I think there have been Premier League strikers far less talented than Gyokeres who have been, largely, crap, but at least have resolved themselves to be a pain in the arse for defenders. Theo Walcott’s technical flaws made me clack my tongue (swear very loudly) repeatedly. But there was, at least, a sense of threat or a sense that, even on his most clown shoes day, defenders were nervous about what he might be able to produce in an isolated moment with his pace and directness.

I don’t see enough of that with Gyokeres. On Wednesday evening in Naples, Arsenal ran up an XG of more than four and Gyokeres didn’t have a shot. I think it illustrated by Arteta has been reluctant to use him and I strongly suspect he remained an unused sub against Coventry and Villa because Arsenal were willing to use him as a makeweight in the event that Julian Alvarez decided that he preferred Arsenal to being a pariah at Atleti.

In a game where Arsenal were defending a one goal lead against a good Chelsea side, he could not act as a release valve. In a game where Arsenal were purring and creating chance after chance against a low block, he didn’t have a shot. The number of game states that suit him feel as though they are slowly vanishing.

It’s a long season and Arsenal need Viktor Gyokeres. He will clearly play a lot of minutes and, to his credit, he played game after game after game last season while the treatment room slowly filled. We can’t rule out that eventuality again. If that scenario doesn’t come to fruition, we still need Gyokeres to play well and score goals because he is a big part of the squad and it’s a long season. There is time to flip the script; but he is starting to feel more like a warm body and a square peg than a valued squad member.

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