For a lot of this season, soccer followers, even Arsenal followers, have regarded Viktor Gyokeres with the sort of suspicion that was as soon as reserved for Stephane Guivarc’h, a person remembered extra for a rogue apostrophe than for the targets he scored for France after they gained the 1998 World Cup.
That was as a result of Guivarc’h didn’t rating any targets in that match. Not a single one. He was France’s centre ahead in six of the seven video games they performed and he began within the closing towards Brazil.
However in a staff that featured dream gamers equivalent to Zinedine Zidane and Youri Djorkaeff, a lot of his exhausting work went unseen. He was regarded by many as an afterthought.
Till Sunday afternoon on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, it has felt a lot the identical with Gyokeres. In a staff of quicksilver skills, he has been characterised as its clodhopper. There have been instances when it appeared as if Arsenal had paid £64m to Sporting Lisbon in the summertime simply to amass an achilles heel.
It was not that Gyokeres didn’t rating targets. It was simply that he didn’t rating sufficient of them. And that the ball appeared to bounce off him. And that he typically misplaced it when he tried to carry it up. And that a few of his team-mates appeared so reluctant to move to him that TikTokers made movies about it.
There was a sense, too, that if Kai Havertz had been capable of keep match, then Gyokeres would have been demoted to the bench. However when Havertz got here again from a protracted lay-off, he quickly succumbed to damage once more. And Arteta has been sensible sufficient and cussed sufficient to maintain religion with Gyokeres.
Martin Odegaard congratulates Viktor Gyokeres after the Swedish striker’s second purpose capped off his best efficiency for Arsenal thus far
The skin notion of Gyokeres as a journeyman floundering in an elite facet got here to an finish in N17 as Sunday afternoon become Sunday night. Gyokeres had what they name in america a ‘breakout sport’. On an event that was vastly essential to Arsenal’s fluttering title hopes, he scored two targets and had a declare to be his staff’s greatest participant.
To see him tear the Spurs defence aside, to see him rating two scientific, emphatic finishes, to see him overpower opponents, to see him run himself into the bottom, jogged my memory ultimately of the Gyokeres I noticed taking Manchester Metropolis to items on the Jose Alvalade Stadium in Lisbon in Sporting’s 4-1 Champions League win there in November 2024.
Gyokeres scored a hat-trick that evening. Arsenal supporters have been ready for that model of Gyokeres to point out up of their colors and towards Spurs, he did.
The breakout second has been coming. His two strikes imply he has scored extra targets in all competitions in 2026 (eight, plus two assists) than another Premier League participant.
Strikers, greater than another gamers, thrive off confidence and Gyokeres is brimming with it now. His efficiency on Sunday instructed that, as an alternative of being the participant who might price Arsenal the title, he may simply be the man who wins it for them.
Arsenal haven’t had a striker who has scored 20 league targets in a season since Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang did it in 2019-20 and Gyokeres, on 10 with 10 video games to play, is unlikely to hit that mark this season, both.
But when he retains going at his latest charge, if Sunday’s sport actually was a sliding doorways second for him, then he may get shut. Final season, Havertz was the membership’s high scorer within the league with 9 targets so not less than Gyokeres has already surpassed that.
It’s exhausting to overstate how essential it will be to Arsenal’s title hopes to have a prolific striker including to their weaponry. It has been their solely actual weak point underneath Arteta however, of their earlier three seasons of ending runners-up within the league to Metropolis and Liverpool, it has been the factor that has price them most dearly.
Gyokeres slots house his second purpose on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to take his tally to 10 league targets this season
Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard and Gabriel Martinelli have shared the membership’s top-scorer mantle over the previous couple of seasons and none of them is a traditional striker in the way in which that Gyokeres is. Becoming one into the facet has been Arteta’s closing hurdle and it’s beginning to look as if he may have cleared it.
Statistics from Sunday additionally counsel that the staff is rising used to Gyokeres, too. No striker can thrive with out service and it’s starting to look as if Arsenal are lastly beginning to belief their Swedish entrance man.
Within the debacle of the draw towards Wolves final week, generally perceived as Arsenal’s worst efficiency of the season, Arsenal gamers solely handed to Gyokeres eight instances. Towards Spurs, they handed to him 28 instances. And Gyokeres delivered.
Simply think about what it is going to do to Arsenal’s psyche within the title run-in in the event that they imagine they’ve a prolific striker of their ranks in addition to chic skills like Saka, Declan Rice, William Saliba and Gabriel.
Metropolis have had that lately. Erling Haaland has all the time been their super-power, their get-out-of-jail card, the most effective in school, the man who can get you a win out of nowhere. He’s nonetheless that participant. He stays a exceptional expertise.
And it has by no means felt fairly proper that Arsenal ought to be on the reverse excessive. It has by no means felt possible that they might win a title with a winger as high scorer or a midfielder. Now that Gyokeres is hitting his stride, that credibility hole doesn’t appear practically as broad.
A delight to see Dele
A stupendous factor occurred at half-time of the north London derby.
Dele Alli, a star who was a reminder of higher instances for Spurs, walked on to the pitch on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium because the membership’s Visitor of Honour for the day and spoke to the stadium announcer, Paul Coyte.
A part of what made it lovely was that it was so sudden. Alli turned what may need been a collection of platitudes right into a baring of his soul and an expression of affection and wistfulness for a golden time in a profession that now appears to have slipped away from him.
After a troubled childhood and a spell at MK Dons, Alli joined Spurs in 2015 and made 269 appearances for them, incomes 37 caps for England within the course of. His fortunes have declined sharply since then and he’s at present with no membership. He’s solely 29.
Dele Alli, a star who was a reminder of higher instances for Spurs, was on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium because the membership’s Visitor of Honour for the day
Alli, nonetheless solely 29, scored 67 instances in 269 appearances for Spurs, together with two towards Arsenal
He has not performed since he was launched by Como final 12 months after making one look for the membership. There have been instances in the course of the interview when Alli struggled to talk by way of the emotion of the recollections that strolling on to the pitch and being cheered to the rafters by the gang had unleashed.
‘I hope you’ve got missed me as a lot as I’ve missed you,’ Alli stated. ‘Lots has occurred in our journeys since we have been final collectively however I am again right now and I hope you recognize that you’re going to all the time be my household.’
As he walked off, the gang rose and sang the tune that was all the time his signature. ‘We have got Alli, Dele Alli, I simply do not assume you perceive. He solely price 5 mil, he is higher than Ozil, we have got Dele Alli.’
For membership and for participant, these days really feel lengthy, way back.
