Viktor Gyokeres is starting to look like the striker Arsenal bought him to be. Three days after converting a penalty in a 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final at the Metropolitano, he scored twice and created another as Arsenal beat Fulham 3-0 to move six points clear at the top of the Premier League.
The haul took Gyokeres to 20-plus goals in all competitions in his debut season in north London, making him only the second Arsenal player this century to reach that mark in a first campaign. It is a sharp turn for a player who had scored five times in his first 21 Premier League appearances, with only one of those goals coming from the penalty spot, after arriving from Sporting CP last July for £64 million ($86m).
That price tag was built on the numbers he produced in Lisbon, where Gyokeres scored 68 league goals in 66 games across two seasons. Arsenal signed him as the centre-forward they had been missing, yet his first half-season in England was described as surprisingly difficult and his early rhythm never quite matched the expectations around him. The club still had three Premier League games to play and possibly two more Champions League matches when he began to find the form they needed.
Mikel Arteta said Gyokeres' slow start was affected by a truncated pre-season, a consequence of how long the move from Sporting took to complete. Even so, his first months in England gave critics plenty to question. Jamie Carragher said on Sky Sports that in the biggest games Gyokeres had looked a little bit short, and argued that Arsenal's problem was not finishing but creating, saying they do not make enough chances from open play.
That is where the tension now sits for Arsenal. Gyokeres has begun to answer the concern with output at both end of the week, but the wider issue remains whether he can keep producing in the matches that matter most, and whether Arsenal can supply enough of the service that turns his arrival into the upgrade they paid for. For now, the signs are getting harder to dismiss. More on Arsenal's attacking reshuffle is in this piece on how Gyokeres gives them a new way to attack after Arteta's gamble, and on the scrutiny that followed his early weeks in England.
