Taproom Network

By Andy Francis

Arsenal broke the bank last summer to sign Viktor Gyökeres, bringing in the striker from Sporting Lisbon for around £55m. And the reason was simple. They wanted the one thing the squad had lacked for years: a striker who guarantees you goals, week in, week out. They ended a 20-year title wait last season. But a year on, with the trophy to defend, that box still doesn’t look truly ticked. And it might just be the thing that stops them doing it again.

The goals are there. The goalscorer isn’t.

On the face of it, Arsenal’s attack works fine. Last season they scored 71 league goals, and the quality of the chances they created (measured by xG) came out at just under 70. So they scored almost exactly what a side creating that many good openings should. No hidden crisis in the raw output.

Look closer, though, and the cracks show. Arsenal wasted a whopping 76 big chances across the campaign, the kind of clear openings you back a top team to bury. And when you add up who actually scored, the midfielders outscored the strikers, 26 to 21. That’s a warning sign dressed up as a strength. A brilliant, deep team, yes, but one without a No.9 who takes the weight off everyone else’s shoulders.

Gyökeres himself managed 14 in the league in his first year. A decent return, and he was sharp in front of goal, scoring more than his chances (worth around 8xG) really merited. But 14 is not 20-plus, and finishing at that rate tends to catch up with a player eventually. It’s extremely rare that a striker carries that level of output long term and regression is highly likely for the Swede.

This season has made it worse, not better

If last season raised the question, the opening weeks of 2026/27 have underlined it in bold. While the Gunners have won four of their five games, those victories have been efficient rather than dominating. They’ve scored eight goals, the same number as 12th-placed Manchester United and at least two fewer than any of the other sides that make up the top four. For a side that’s defending a title, that’s an underwhelming start, and the common thread is a familiar one: plenty of the ball, not enough end product.

They have averaged just under 60% possession across those five games, had 27 shots on target, created 12 big chances but scored an average of just 1.6 goals per game.

Gyökeres, meanwhile, has barely been seen. Twenty-nine minutes on the pitch across those five games. No starts. No goals. The club-record striker is watching from the bench, while the man in front of him is Kai Havertz, who has started every game. Havertz does lots of good work and drops into the play nicely, but nobody has ever mistaken him for a prolific poacher. Useful. Not the same as a fox in the box.

Brighton away: a warning shot

You didn’t have to wait long for a live example. Last weekend, Arsenal travelled to Brighton and were beaten 3-0, two goals down by half time and blunt at the other end all afternoon. It was the nightmare script for a team built like this one. A day when the pretty football doesn’t click, the openings that do arrive get spurned, and there’s no ruthless No.9 to paper over it. This is exactly where a top striker earns his money, nicking a goal against the run of play, halving the deficit, keeping the game and the crowd alive long enough to steal something. Arsenal had no one to throw on for that job, and a tidy-looking start to the season came apart in an afternoon. A striker on song doesn’t just pad the goal difference in the easy wins. He rescues the bad days, and the bad days are where titles quietly slip away.

Winning the league once is hard. Doing it again is harder, because everyone raises their game against the champions and the matches get tighter. Titles are won and lost in scrappy 1-0s and frustrating goalless draws, the afternoons where nothing comes off and you need someone to conjure a goal out of nothing. They have a squad that creates beautifully and finishes unreliably, and over 38 games that combination drops points.

The Gyökeres gamble isn’t lost, but it’s on the clock

None of this means the signing has flopped. Strikers need time, and a fit, confident Gyökeres could still be exactly what Arsenal paid for. But the fact he’s slipped behind Havertz this early tells you the manager isn’t sure yet, and every game he spends out of the side is a game Arsenal go without the very thing they bought.

There’s a sting in the tail, too. Those 14 goals last season came from overperforming his chances, and that rarely lasts. If his finishing cools and Havertz stays streaky, Arsenal could end up creating like champions and converting like the chasing pack.

So, can they retain it?

They’re good enough. The defence is excellent, the midfield runs games, and in Saka they have a genuine matchwinner. On their day, few teams in Europe are better to watch.

But the one job they set out to solve is still open. No guaranteed 20-goal striker, a record signing stuck on the bench, and an afternoon that showed exactly what happens when the machine stops humming. Sort it out and the trophy stays put. Leave it, and the same old question follows Arsenal all the way to May: with all that talent, who’s actually going to score the goals that matter?

Photo: Chensiyuan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original AI-upscaled by the photographer; adapted with AI-assisted reframing, background treatment and headline overlay for Taproom Network. Adapted image licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.