When Arsenal signed Gabriel Jesus in 2022, it rocked the Emirates Stadium. The Gunners were signing a player who was key to Manchester City’s success in years gone by.
Jesus arrived in a £45m deal and made an instant impact. He was simply sublime.
The Brazilian immediately got into the groove in pre-season and then began the 2022/23 campaign, arguably the most free-flowing of Mikel Arteta’s reign, with five goals and three assists in his first eight Premier League matches.
Sadly, since then, it’s been an agonising tale of woe for the 28-year-old who has now bagged 26 in 96 outings for Arsenal.
A wretched series of injuries have crippled the forward’s time in north London and Arteta’s side have felt the devastating impacts.
Kai Havertz has been transformed into a striker, and to his credit, he has done well. However, after Jesus suffered an ACL injury last winter, it meant that Mikel Merino stepped in as deputy.
The fact Arsenal made it to the semi-finals of the Champions League with the squad they had was a miracle, truth be told.
Yet, the squad has been rebuilt and repurposed by Andrea Berta this summer. A series of signings have been made to the forward line which includes Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke. Viktor Gyokeres, however, was perhaps the most marquee addition of a colossal transfer window.
How Gyokeres is performing since moving to Arsenal
Signed for a guaranteed £55m this summer from Sporting CP, the addition of Gyokeres ended what felt like a two-year search for a centre forward, a genuine out-and-out goalscorer.
Last season was the first at Arsenal in 101 years that a player in the squad failed to score double figures in league action. While Havertz and Saka spent large parts of the campaign out, it spoke volumes of a forward line lacking punch, lacking spark.
Well, Gyokeres will certainly add the punch. He’s a brute, a heavyweight forward with an eye for goal. He scored 54 in 52 games last term, a truly ridiculous record.
Since moving to the Emirates, the Swede has found the net on two occasions in three matches, albeit both goals came in the 5-0 win over Leeds United.
In the two other games, he has struggled, perhaps understandably so. Those two examinations have come at Old Trafford and Anfield, hardly happy hunting grounds for many strikers.
What will be concerning, however, is just how isolated the new signing looks. Against United, there was a real lack of service from Saka and Gabriel Martinelli. Against Liverpool, while the Sweden international was more involved in the build-up, he was again starved of service.
In both of those games, he’s failed to have a single shot. It will take time, of course it will, for this forward line to tick with Gyokeres at the head of the attack, but they need to work it out quickly.
They have one of the best creators in the game in Saka and one of the most ruthless finishers in Europe. This feels like Arsenal’s best chance at winning the title in many a year, even if Liverpool have signed Alexander Isak.
Speaking of Gyokeres’ fellow countryman, did Arsenal let a better finisher than both of them leave for nothing?
Better than Isak and Gyokeres: Arsenal's biggest Hale End blunder
This summer, Arsenal corrected one of their biggest blunders at Hale End. When he was 13, the Gunners decided to release a certain Eze from the academy, a decision that left the young kid in tears.
Well, to get back to Arsenal, he’s gone around the houses. Eze became a genuine livewire at QPR and then after moving to Crystal Palace, it wasn’t long before he became a household name.
Back where it all began, the England international is living the dream and simply cannot stop smiling. He’s been beaming from ear to ear from the moment he arrived back in the north of London.
Yet, he’s definitely not the biggest mistake out of Hale End. That honour goes to the Harry Kane situation.
Tottenham Hotspur fans have always sung that he is one of their own, but is that strictly true? Perhaps not.
Indeed, Kane’s first club was Arsenal but like Eze, he was released too early. Joining the academy aged eight, he left after just one season.
“He was a bit chubby, he wasn’t very athletic but we made a mistake,” admitted Liam Brady back in 2018.
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A mistake it certainly was. While Kane didn’t exactly flourish in his early years at Spurs, enduring and enjoying loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester, he went on to become and still is, one of the best forwards in Europe.
In fact, the aforementioned Jesus has even described the now 32-year-old as “the best finisher in the world.”
While he didn’t beat Gyokeres for goals last term, he came mightily close, bagging 41 in 51 outings but he did so at a higher level. Indeed, Global Football Rankings notes that the Bundesliga is the fifth-best division in the world, compared to Liga Portugal, which sits in eighth.
Games
31
34
Goals
26
23
Shots per 90
3.4
2.5
Shot accuracy
60%
60.53%
Conversion rate
28.89%
30.26%
Assists
8
6
Chances created per 90
1.4
1.4
It’s safe to say Kane is elite. He’s been doing it at the top level for a number of years now and has showcased that he can do it on a consistent basis.
The jury is still out as far as Gyokeres is concerned, while the Premier League’s record signing, £125m man Isak, still needs to prove himself over a number of years too.
Isak scored 23 goals in the league last term but unlike Kane, he is yet to win a Golden Boot.
The Spurs icon is the winner of three Premier League Golden Boots, having won it in 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2020/21. He even finished as the top scorer at the 2018 World Cup.
In total for Arsenal’s biggest rivals, he scored 280 times in 435 outings and he is now only second to Alan Shearer as the division’s highest-ever scorer.
To put it simply, Kane is one of the most elite forwards in the world. He’s better than Gyokeres and Isak and it may be a few years yet before we can classify them in the same bracket. It’s certainly a case of what might have been as far as Arsenal are concerned.
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