Viktor Gyökeres had nine touches in 73 minutes in Naples. The number matters less than what those touches looked like. His best contribution came early, when he moved into the right channel and bent a clever trivela towards Bukayo Saka for the overhead kick that Alex Meret saved. It was instinctive. Slightly rude, even. Then he almost disappeared.
Arsenal took 26 shots against Napoli. Gyökeres took none. For a centre-forward playing in a side camped around the opposition box for long spells, that is the part I cannot get away from. He looked like a striker waiting for Arsenal to create his game rather than a striker trying to bend the game towards himself.
That was never the appeal at Sporting. Gyökeres played with the sort of selfish confidence defenders hate. Give him a channel and he attacked it. Give him contact and he treated it as permission to keep going. If the obvious pass was backwards, he was still capable of turning and forcing a centre-back into a duel. Plenty of his decisions were aggressive before they were correct. That was the point.
The Arsenal version is beginning to look too well behaved. He holds the central position. He waits for the next phase. He makes the run the structure appears to demand and, if the ball does not arrive, he resets. You can see the logic. Arsenal are a much more choreographed possession team than Sporting were. A forward has responsibilities here beyond hunting the next shot.
The danger is obvious. Gyökeres can become so occupied with learning Arsenal that Arsenal lose the reason they wanted Gyökeres.
Naples was a good example because service cannot carry the whole defence. Arsenal controlled the ball and got bodies around the box. Saka, Eberechi Eze, Martin Ødegaard, Mikel Merino and Piero Hincapié all found ways to arrive in threatening areas. Gyökeres was the player Arsenal were supposedly trying to find, yet he rarely made himself the centre of the attack. Nine touches tells you he was disconnected. Zero shots tells you he never really rebelled against it.
Some of this comes from the environment. Sporting could release him into open grass more often. Arsenal spend far more time facing defenders who have already retreated into shape. He will not get the same diet of long carries and exposed centre-backs. That makes his personality more important. He has to create discomfort inside a game that naturally wants to become controlled.
Kai Havertz is already better at the controlled version. He understands the little movements that open a lane for Ødegaard, when to leave the centre, when to become a wall pass and when to drag a defender away from the next action. Gyökeres will lose this selection battle if he tries to out-Havertz Havertz.
His route into the side is to make the comparison irrelevant. Arsenal should want the striker who turns a harmless clearance into a race, who takes a shot a more cautious forward leaves alone, who occasionally ruins the geometry because he has decided the centre-back is there to be attacked. There will be possessions where that choice looks ugly. Arsenal can survive ugly possessions. What they cannot afford is a version of Gyökeres who becomes passive in the pursuit of being tidy.
Arteta spoke after the match about Ødegaard playing with personality and having an edge. That description fits the problem with Gyökeres almost perfectly. Arsenal need more edge from him. More entitlement. More moments where he behaves as though the attack belongs to him.
The temptation will be to make him cleaner in combination play and more precise within Arsenal’s positional game. Improve those things, of course. Do not sand down the thing that made the transfer interesting. A striker like Gyökeres should occasionally annoy his own midfielders because he has gone before they were ready or shot before the pattern was complete.
If Arsenal polish the chaos out of Gyökeres, they will end up with a striker who fits the team and frightens nobody.
Gerry G – Goonerviews
