Football
Viktor Gyokeres is set to join Arsenal; the Swedish forward scored 39 league goals last season – more than any other player in Europe’s top eight leagues – but are goals in the Portuguese top-flight a fair judge of quality?
@SamBIitz
Wednesday 23 July 2025 08:11, UK
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For years, the football world called for Arsenal to sign a striker and the Gunners have finally responded. Viktor Gyokeres is on his way to the Emirates.
The move is set to be a standout one for the Premier League – no player in Europe’s top eight divisions matched Gyokeres’ 39 league goals for Sporting last season and it could herald the arrival of another elite goalscorer for the division.
But it is even more significant for Arsenal, given their spending under Mikel Arteta.
Before this summer, just £75m went towards players who naturally play in the front three, since Arteta took over. The majority of that sum went on Gabriel Jesus’ £45m transfer from Manchester City in 2023, with Leandro Trossard the only other major outlay in that department.
There was also an additional £65m spent on Kai Havertz but the German initially started out as an attacking midfielder for Arsenal, before transitioning into the centre forward role.
In these contexts, Arsenal moving for Gyokeres and the £52m-rated Noni Madueke makes sense on paper. Not only are the Gunners investing in an area where they need more quality and numbers – Jesus is out for the rest of this year with injury – but in Gyokeres, they are also bringing in a natural centre forward, which Havertz has never really been.
There is also Gyokeres’ previous experience of English football, via his successful stint at Coventry where he scored 40 goals in 97 matches. “He really was incredible,” Adi Viveash, who coached and mentored the striker there, tells Sky Sports.
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“His power, taking the ball and running with it, bursting through gaps, linking the play, being very good in both boxes set-piece-wise – which wasn’t a strength of his, but he became certainly very good at defensive set-pieces with me through front post defending.”
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He sounds like an Arsenal player. Except that compared to the options in Arteta’s squad, he’s not. On top of his profile of being a natural No 9, he’s very different stylistically to what the Gunners have.
Viveash describes Gyokeres as “a physical machine” and others have referred to him as a ‘battering ram’. One diverse area of his skillset, compared to Arsenal’s options, is his ability to carry the ball great distances.
Gyokeres ranked third in the Portuguese top-flight last season for progressive carries up the pitch, which is particularly impressive given ball-playing defenders tend to dominate these metrics across Europe.
Compared to Arsenal’s strikers, his running ability is another level. In terms of progressing their team forwards, Havertz and Jesus managed 40m and 48m respectively per 90. Gyokeres progressed Sporting by 53m per game – more than half the length of the pitch.
“His ability to run and keep running and keep running and keep running is the thing that set him apart in the Championship,” adds Viveash.
“The strikers at other teams, they could produce three or four brilliant runs, but he would do 12, 13, 14.”
It is particularly important given the way Arsenal attacked last season. They had the sixth-lowest shots from fast breaks last season and really struggled to turn defence to attack quickly.
Signing a centre forward who can charge through defences and speed up attacks – he scored 23 goals from fast breaks last season – can help fix these dilemmas.
“If two or three defenders came to try and take the ball off him, his mentality was: I’ll just run through all of you and that’s the way that he is,” remembers Matty Godden, who played with him at Coventry, speaking to Sky Sports.
Gyokeres also enjoys making runs in behind, with Havertz and Jesus not blessed with the forward’s burning pace and power to test backlines.
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“If you give Vik half a pitch in behind with a high line and you get the line wrong, you’re never going to catch him,” adds Viveash. “He’s going to keep making the run in behind so you’re wearing down opposition.”
At Arsenal, Gyokeres won’t always have that luxury of space to burn into – given the Premier League title challengers are often tasked with breaking down a low block.
That was also a challenge Gyokeres faced at Coventry, once the Championship worked out his talents. “Obviously in the end, the defensive lines dropped,” recalls Viveash.
“I used to do a lot of work with him in tight areas because when he got on a pitch with full grass [to run into], it was easier for him. It took a lot of cajoling to get him to understand and buy into that.”
It was not the only area of disagreement involving Gyokeres at Coventry. While the Swedish forward arrived at the Sky Blues as an out-of-confidence forward following failed spells at Brighton and Swansea, he developed into a top goalscorer that nearly drove Coventry to the Premier League – so an ego emerged.
“Vik would want to do training sessions to be the way Vik wanted to work,” remembers Viveash.
“He wanted to do finishing at a certain time, he wanted to do this, he wanted to do that. He had a strong character, strong personality and when you get two of you like that, then you have to find a way of communicating.
“And you’d butt heads at times, for the good of each other really, but he certainly understood his worth as time went on.” The manner of his Sporting departure – a refusal to turn up for pre-season to force through a move – has similar tones.
It would be interesting to see how Arteta would manage that type of temperament, should it appear again.
And there are other doubts when it comes to Gyokeres. For all of his excellent attacking numbers in Portugal, they are still under the microscope.
Opta rank the Primeira Division as the eighth-best league in the world in terms of quality. The Premier League is top, but Portugal’s top-flight even sits below England’s second tier, where Gyokeres plied his trade before his move to Sporting.
On top of that, over half of his 27 non-penalty goals were against the Primeira Division’s bottom four teams.
Portugal’s best striker moving to one of England’s top clubs has also been done recently in the case of Darwin Nunez, who scored 26 league goals in his final season at Benfica before joining Liverpool for a huge fee. The same forward has not even hit 26 league goals in three full seasons at Anfield combined.
Some will argue Gyokeres created a bigger splash than Nunez in Portugal, while also pointing to Evanilson’s positive move from Porto to Bournemouth last season, plus Raul Jimenez’s impact at Wolves after joining from Benfica as positive examples of Portugal-based forwards doing well in the Premier League.
But neither of those players came with the expectations and the backdrop that Gyokeres currently has at Arsenal.
Many have attributed Arsenal’s failed title races to the lack of a centre forward and while the Gunners have signed players like Martin Zubimendi and are targeting other high-profile names such as Eberechi Eze, there is no doubt who will have the biggest spotlight on them this summer.
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