Gyök 'n' Roll Star
It looks like Arsenal have their new striker. A long-read on Viktor Gyökeres: pros, cons, how he plays, what he'll add, how he'll fit.
“Against Manchester United we had 11 situations where we had open spaces to attack, 11 big ones. We used one. Top teams, they use nine. … The situations were there. We didn’t use them.”
That’s what Mikel Arteta said a couple of days after Arsenal’s 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in March. It’s safe to assume the number wasn’t plucked out of thin air, but came up in a post-match analysis session.
Here’s something else Arteta said in the same press conference, prior to the home leg against PSV Eindhoven, when asked about Arsenal struggling to generate enough chances:
“It's not only about the space, but it also has to be created, not just used. To create it, you need threat behind as well to stretch things out. You need players that can fix more than one opponent as well. I think it's very important to create the spaces.”
So, in a period where Arsenal were struggling to consistently create chances, Arteta opined:
Arsenal need more of a threat in behind to stretch teams and create space
Arsenal need players to “fix” more than one opponent
When Arsenal have “open spaces” to attack, they need to seize them
Fast-forward four months and it seems Arsenal are going to sign Viktor Gyökeres, scorer of 97 goals in 102 appearances for Sporting CP, to play up front for the club. Let’s dig into how we got here, what Gyökeres does, how he and Arsenal fit together, and how good he might be at a higher level.
Arsenal have found themselves in an unenviable position. The club must sign a striker this summer, but there is no must-sign striker on the market. There is a lot to consider with any signing and there are question marks over every single centre-forward out there. That doesn’t mean those players are bad or not at the level, but nobody stood out as an obvious, guaranteed, successful, value for money fit for Arsenal.
You can’t know the unknowable and we never truly know how a signing will work out.
With a strong track record in the Premier League, Ollie Watkins is at least a bit more of a known quantity than the other players linked. No player has ever scored more Premier League goals for Villa than Watkins, who has 75 over five seasons in England’s top flight, but he will turn 30 before the end of the year* and would not come cheap.
*This doesn’t make him bad! But it would mean having to work hard to replace him again in 2-3 years, which is not as urgent an issue with, say, a 27-year-old
The January interest in Watkins is interesting, though, especially if you keep in mind Arteta’s comments at the top of this piece. At the end of the season, The Athletic published an article with ‘alternative’ Premier League awards. Watkins was mentioned for being the Premier League player who made the highest proportion of his runs in behind the last line of the defence. That article included a list of the 20 top players by that measure in the Premier League last season and not a single Arsenal player featured.
We don’t know how far adrift the highest ranking Arsenal player would’ve been — that data is from SkillCorner and I don’t have access to it — but you don’t have to watch Viktor Gyökeres for long to decide he’d probably sit high up.
As we know, Arsenal didn’t sign Watkins in January, and the club seemed to quickly zero in on two strikers targets for the summer.
Benjamin Šeško has just turned 22. He hasn’t been prolific to date but strikes a ball incredibly well with both feet, is huge and excellent in the air, and is absolutely rapid. Arsenal already tried to sign him last summer and clearly like the idea of him playing his football in north London.
The other target has been Gyökeres. At 27, he’s more established and more experienced than Šeško, albeit with less room/time to grow, and boasts an incredible goalscoring record over recent years. The caveat is that he has scored those goals in far weaker leagues than the Premier League. That was obviously enough of a reason for Arsenal to have their doubts 12 months ago, when Šeško opted to stay at RB Leipzig and Arsenal decided against signing an alternative.
That history makes this all feel a little reminiscent of the signings of Alexandre Lacazette — Arsenal were linked to him for years before finally pulling the trigger — and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who Arsenal chose not to go after when they signed Lacazette, only to change their minds halfway through the season and add Aubameyang after all.
Lacazette’s final season tally at Lyon, the season that convinced Arsenal to finally buy him, was heavily inflated by penalties. He never quite hit 15 Premier League goals in a season for Arsenal. Aubameyang had two 22-goal Premier League campaigns, winning the Golden Boot in one of those, and he remains the only two Arsenal player to record multiple 20-goal league seasons since Thierry Henry.
Clearly, there can be mixed results when it comes to hesitating on a player before ultimately deciding, some time later, that you should’ve just pulled the trigger. A year after deciding not to chase Gyökeres after failing to tempt Šeško to move, Arsenal, with Andrea Berta now having a say in matters, kept their options open and got serious about Gyökeres after all.
Let’s take the zoomed-out look at Gyökeres for a second. There’s only one place to start and the headline numbers are insane: the man scores goals.
Across two seasons at Coventry City, he scored 40 goals in 97 appearances to earn a move to Sporting in July 2023. Since then, he has scored 109 goals in 114 appearances for club and country. That’s a lot of goals.
He strikes the ball cleanly and with incredible power with both feet, often leaving defenders in doubt and goalkeepers helpless.
But don’t get hung up on thinking it’s only about goals, Gyökeres does more than just that. He is a powerful runner and drives forward with the ball whenever he gets the chance, and is especially keen to drag centre-backs into the channels — where they don’t like to be — before really stretching his legs and taking them on. And the most impressive thing is he does the above over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. He looks exhausting to defend against.
It’s when you zoom in on his career to date — the way he plays, what the goals actually looks like, who the goals have come against — that the questions arise.
Nobody is doubting the goal record, but how will it be impacted by playing against better players and better teams? What happens when defenders can match his speed and his size? What happens when teams sit back and he doesn’t have any space to run into? How does it all translate from dominating in Portugal to playing in the Premier League and for Arsenal specifically?
GYÖKERES THE FOOTBALLER
Watching Gyökeres, it feels like almost everything comes back to his mentality. He’s intense, and there is a rare bloody mindedness to his game. That’s a compliment, for the record.
Here’s something former Coventry City assistant Adrian Vivaseh said when speaking to The Athletic (£) last year:
“He was a really interesting character to work with because he was so driven. Obviously, I’m a driven coach. I’ve been fortunate to work with some top, top players. He’d say; ‘Well, I’m better than them.’ … The confidence has always been there.”
We all know that Gyökeres scores loads of goals, but how does he get his chances and what do those goals look like?
Well, he loves to drift to the channels, especially to the left and burst in behind the defence, dragging a centre-back with him before racing through on goal or squaring up a defender and taking him on. It’s silly how many of his chances come like that. Arsenal fans saw the move up close last season.
The Swede was well marshalled by Gabriel and William Saliba but he kept drifting across the width of the pitch, he kept making that run into the channel between centre-back and full-back, and he kept putting his foot through the ball whenever he had a sight of goal. There wasn’t a great deal of subtlety to his performance, and he doesn’t do half measures. I’ll come onto what Gyökeres’ trademark run into the channel will mean for Arsenal in a bit.
Just to put some numbers on the intensity — which is present not just in what Gyökeres does, but the fact that he does it over and over again — in the league last season, he took 25 shots following a successful take-on. In Europe’s top five leagues, only Lamine Yamal, Vini Jr and Jamie Gittens (all wingers) recorded more. Of those 25 successful take-ons, nine led to a goal. The most in Europe’s top five leagues was six.
Gyökeres completed 97 (3.11 per 90) carries into the penalty area across the league campaign. Another look to Europe’s top five leagues and you’ll see only Mohamed Salah, Vini Jr and Jeremy Doku managed more. The most by an out-and-out number nine was Hugo Ekitiké with 52 (1.82 per 90) and even then that feels a little different, as he often played in a front two rather than leading the line on his own.
You don’t get a lot of goals unless you get a lot of chances, and Gyökeres works incredibly hard not just to get those chances but to create them for himself. As a defender, the clean sheet is never secured, you can win six, seven, eight duels in a row but he will come at you again with the same drive. That hunger is rare but it’s at the heart of everything about the player.
And you also feel the intensity whenever he gets a shot away. He smacks the ball. With both feet. The sheer force behind a lot of his goals is impressive and it adds to the sense of brutality that has made Gyökeres the goalscorer he has been in Portugal.
There are, of course, areas of his game that aren’t as impressive. Movement (fine) and decisiveness (not so much) in the box.
He is generally alive to rebounds and bouncing balls, he’s good at timing a run between defenders when the ball is out wide and about to come in, but in terms of creating half a yard for himself in a packed box he isn’t so sharp. There are some double-movements and dummy runs — elite penalty box strikers talk about making one run for the defender and then another for yourself — but they’re not sharp enough, and there aren’t enough of them for him to be a truly reliable poacher in a packed penalty area.
Speaking of a packed penalty area, he does also tend to take too many touches rather than getting snapshots off, and too many of his efforts are blocked shots as a result. He will have to learn to pull the trigger quicker in the Premier League.
By now you’ve probably read about Gyökeres, bizarrely, not scoring a single header last season despite scoring 39 goals. It’s a weird quirk, considering how physical he looks when the ball is on the ground.
He has scored headers in the past but they are very rare. Of his 106 league goals for Coventry and Sporting, six have been headers. By way of comparison, Havertz has nodded in 10 of his 41 Premier League goals for Arsenal and Chelsea.
To me, it’s less about a lack of technique in the air in the case of Gyökeres, and more about his ability to compete aerially: when he does score headers, they tend to come when he’s arriving in the box unmarked, not against a set defence. He’s alright at getting himself between a pair of centre-backs when the ball goes wide, he just struggles to both get off the ground and get power behind a header when there’s contact in those situations.
Off the ball he isn’t the most consistent presser (perhaps there’s an element of saving himself for when his team is back in possession?) but he isn’t bad at it either. Not everyone can naturally read all the angles and slot in like Gabriel Jesus. When Gyökeres does go, he’s intense and he doesn’t consider anything a lost cause, but he will need time to learn Arsenal’s out of possession patterns.
I don’t think he’s particularly good with his back to goal against good defenders. There are some nice lay-offs and spins in behind but he allows markers to get too close to him, rather than using his backside and his arms to create some separation and shield the ball. Honestly? I don’t think that’s an enormous issue for Arsenal: they shouldn’t want Gyökeres with his back to goal, and they have Kai Havertz for when they want a centre-forward to do that.
GYÖKERES FITTING AT ARSENAL
Remember how Arteta said you have to create space by stretching teams?
“It's not only about the space, but it also has to be created, not just used. To create it, you need threat behind as well to stretch things out. You need players that can fix more than one opponent as well. I think it's very important to create the spaces.”
And remember how in the Premier League last season Ollie Watkins was the player with the highest proportion of his runs made in behind the defence?
Well check this out, also from The Athletic (£):
According to SkillCorner, (Gyökeres) made 85 sprints in behind the opposition defensive line last season, runs at an average pace of 25km/h or more. That’s more than double any other striker in the division — Porto’s Samu Aghehowa is closest with 41 — and 24 more than the Premier League leader in that metric, Chelsea’s Nicolas Jackson.
Just to hammer home the point, here’s another quote from former Coventry assistant Adrian Vivaseh:
“If you defend on the halfway line against someone like Vik, he is going to keep running in behind. He may miss one or two chances, but he’ll make the run 13, 14, 15 times.”
Yeah, Arsenal don’t have that, and it shows in the games the team has struggled in. Teams who play with intensity in a compact mid-block — they don’t press really high, but they don’t ‘park the bus’ — have been a serious issue for Arteta’s Arsenal in recent seasons.
I think of Newcastle, Aston Villa, Fulham. The Gunners have won just four of their 14 games against Newcastle, Aston Villa and Fulham. Those points cost the team a league title in 2023/24, then an EFL Cup Final appearance and a realistic chance of challenging with Liverpool in 2024/25.
I also think, way too often, about those two legs against Porto in the 2023/24 Champions League. So I went to watch Sporting’s games against that Porto to see what might have been different with Gyökeres leading the line in the sort of fixture Arsenal have consistently been struggling with.
In terms of making those runs repeatedly, even when nothing is coming of them, there’s a nice example from a game against Porto near the end of the 2023/24 season.
With Sporting two goals down against Porto in 2024, came on at half-time and actually didn’t get much joy. But he did keep plugging away and eventually scored a brace to win his side a point.
The first goal is below. You see he threatens one run in behind the Porto right-back, but the pass isn’t played and Gyökeres gets back onside, then drags the right-back inside with him a few steps.
Those few steps open up space for a team-mate to burst outside to receive a long ball unmarked. Gyökeres makes a run between the two centre-backs and heads home.
He likes that left channel and he really liked it against Porto. Here’s one from earlier that season, where he takes Pepe, nominally the left-sided centre-back, where he doesn’t want to be (wide on the right, isolated) before winning the one-on-one.
It’s fair to question whether the lack of this type of run from Arsenal players is a choice Arteta makes, whether it’s instructed. But his quotes after the Manchester United game suggest not. Or at least, if it is instructed, it’s because he either doesn’t have enough players who are suited to these runs or enough players looking to play the pass. That’s the nice thing about Gyökeres, he’s a completely different profile to what the club have right now and that pass will be played when he makes the run so often.
In possession, too many Arsenal players drift wide or come towards the ball too often. They don’t stretch teams with a threat in behind very often, they don’t drag their markers across the pitch with a sudden burst.
I always like to think of these movements — the sort Gyökeres offers constantly — in terms of giving defenders decisions to make. Defending is easy when there isn’t much movement and it’s obvious what everyone’s responsibility is. When you make sudden runs, long ones, defenders have questions to answer: should I go with him? Should I pass him on? When should I pass him on?
Even when every question is answered perfectly, executing it is another matter, with the defending of the situation hinging on team-mates being on the same page within a split second. It doesn’t take much of an error for space to appear or for a player to end up unmarked. Gyökeres, with his movement and his intensity, makes defenders make decisions, and he asks them questions that Arsenal don’t ask enough of.
That long ball into the channel shouldn’t be played every time, but just having the option should stretch teams: threatening the space in behind a defence will create more space in front of them.
With Premier League defenders generally quicker, stronger, and better one-on-one than their counterparts in Portugal, it’s valuable that Gyökeres isn’t bad at all at picking out an assist from those channels and it isn’t hard to picture Gabriel Martinelli bursting into the box, undercutting a Gyökeres run down the left, and Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka arriving from the opposite side to attack the box, wait for cutbacks, pounce on rebounds.
I am wary of how many chances he can generate and take against teams who really sit deep and pack their own box. His movement, his tendency to take a touch to set himself, and his lack of prowess in the air are all big question marks in those situations.
On the plus side, Gyökeres does have a hunger to get on the end of balls across the six-yard box, the sort of low cross that Arsenal do put in but often don’t have anyone on the end of, and his ball-striking (and willingness to shoot) will offer Arsenal an additional threat from the edge of the box.
With set-pieces a huge part of Arsenal’s attack, it’s not great to swap Havertz/Merino out of the side for someone who doesn’t offer a threat in the air and I’m interested to see how he’s deployed at corners and the like.
It looks like Sporting often used him on the goalkeeper from corners, let’s call it ‘the Ben White role’. It’s worth keeping in mind they play with three centre-backs who can all attack the ball, so maybe that also played into dropping their striker closer to goal so he can be a nuisance and react to any opportunities to hoover up rebounds. I’m interested to see where Arsenal use him.
PROJECTION
I have two things to say about the term ‘flat-track bully’.
It’s used in a derogatory way and I don’t think it should be.
I don’t necessarily think Gyökeres is one.
The first point: it’s harder to score goals against better teams. Duh. Scoring goals against weaker teams is still something you have to do, and doing so regularly will win you lots and lots of points.
To the second, I don’t really want to look too much at his numbers in Europe because they’re too easily skewed in a small sample (two of his three goals against Manchester City were penalties) and opponent quality (one of his other Champions League goals was scored against Sturm Graz) varies wildly.
Likewise, I’m not giving too much thought to his record at international level, where his return is impressive but he has scored more than half of his 15 goals against Azerbaijan and Estonia. No disrespect to Azerbaijan but, you know. And in the Championship, well, it’s nice that he knows English culture already but Adam Armstrong is also prolific in that league and nobody is making the case for Arsenal to sign him.
Let’s just take a look at Gyökeres in Portugal. Namely, against the few Portuguese sides who could hang around at Premier League level. Taking just his games against Porto, Sporting CP and Braga, and comparing them to the games against the rest of the league during his two years in Portugal, we get this:
Obviously he’s less prolific — that really should go without saying — but it’s by no means a horrendous or an indication that he can’t score against better teams.
Arsenal have been excellent against the top teams over recent seasons anyway; they haven’t lost a league game to any of Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham or Manchester United since April 2023.
The biggest attraction with Gyökeres is the way he plays and how that fits into the games where Arsenal have been too blunt. His intensity and movement bring something completely different to the mix for those encounters. Whatever questions there may be when it comes to his all-round play, Arsenal need something different rather than an improved version of what they already have, and that’s what Gyökeres can be. He should stretch defences and give the team a much bigger transitional threat, more space to play in, and more clinical finishing.
Still, for all the things he does that Arsenal need someone to do, he has not done them at Premier League level and that is the big unknown. Remove the physical advantages he enjoys over centre-backs in Portugal and he will not be so dominant. Thanks to his mentality in particularly he probably also won’t be ineffective, at least not in the right matches, but the higher level will take away what looked like superpowers in Portugal and will shine a brighter light on his flaws.
Given his mentality, I do see him working on those flaws. Some players have arrived in England at a similar age (Didier Drogba and Olivier Giroud were both around a year younger) and shown massive improvement when challenged at a higher level. Gyökeres will come up against Gabriel and William Saliba in training every day and that’s the sort of thing that can only help: producing at the weekend isn’t so hard when it feels like a day off compared to training.
But I am still wary of Gyökeres and his rough edges. When defences sit deep and pack their box and invite crosses, will he get enough goals to make the difference? When defenders are quicker, stronger, smarter, how effective will those runs in behind be? What happens when they can match his intensity?
There are lots of smart people at Arsenal and they would have been through the pros and cons of every viable target. Their attributes, quality, physique, temperament, fit, price/value, age, versatility. All of the above and much, much, more. And they didn’t go for this guy a year ago, and he wasn’t their number one standout candidate this summer either. At the same time, they have decided he’s the best option for the club.
Nobody can be sure how this will all turn out. There are reasons to be optimistic and reasons to have some questions that can only be answered in time. I had more doubts and liked Gyökeres less before digging in to write about the transfer here. Those doubts still remain but I see a little more of what Arsenal may have seen. I still don’t think he’ll usurp Havertz up front but I do think they’ll share the job and there are games where you’d rather see Gyökeres start.
Whatever camp you’re in on this move — or if you’re happy to just wait and see — every Arsenal fan wants the same thing. Time will tell whether we get it.