At times during that difficult start to his first season at Arsenal Viktor Gyökeres looked more likely to fall over than score a Premier League goal. But why compromise? Why choose one over the other? Against Sunderland Gyökeres found a third way. He fell over while scoring. Maybe you can have it all.
It made for a deeply wholesome moment. Gyökeres couldn’t help smiling ruefully behind his peekaboo celebration, even as he was mobbed fondly by his teammates. The goal was also his first touch seven minutes after coming on, a goal to kill a game Arsenal had eased through in low gear, and which always felt like a matter of housekeeping, a question of exactly how and how many, from the moment they took the lead just before half-time.
By the end this had turned into an excellent afternoon for Gyökeres, not just because he scored twice in a 3-0 win and had his best Arsenal game so far, but because it was also a very Viktor Gyökeres kind of game.
He still ran around like a man being chased by a sheepdog and preparing to hurl himself headfirst over a fence. As ever he looked through it all like a mythical Finnish wartime assassin who only eats self-killed venison and pine bark.
And yes, he fell over putting the ball in the net. But the goal also came at the end of a really slick, deeply Arsenal kind of move, three parts of the team working in perfect concert.
Declan Rice pressed hard in the right-back position. Leandro Trossard was super-smart in his movement, dropping off, anticipating where the ball would end up. Trossard’s instant pass to Kai Havertz was beautifully precise. Havertz looked up and eased the ball into Gyökeres’s stride as his left foot gave way on a mulchy surface and the ball was whumped low into the net.
Gyökeres’s second touch shortly afterwards was also significant. It involved bumping Noah Sadiki to the floor just outside the Arsenal penalty area with an expert flex of his rump, then haring off in search of a return pass. Arenal players don’t really do this kind of thing. Gyökeres does this. Poaching and arse-bumps. This is what you sign him for. Maybe Mikel Arteta should have just taken him off at that point, two touches in, a perfect game completed, Total Gyökeres.
However, by now Arsenal were running away with a game they had previously been walking away with. And Gyökeres’s second in stoppage time was also a good moment. It came from a breakaway in the dying moments, the second in four days on this ground, a two-man sprint, arms pumping, Chariots of Fire energy, Gabriel Martinelli streaking in on goal, Gyökeres showing decent sustained speed to keep pace, then rolling a perfect little sideways pass into the back of the Sunderland net.
What does it mean? Is Gyökeres the real thing now? Is he that trinket in the window, the £68m goal-machine centre forward? Will he ever be that? He remains unlikely to be mistaken at a casual glance for, say, Thierry Henry. Bundling and poaching remain the game. But in numbers terms things are regularising. He has six goals in his last eight across three competitions. He is now the club’s top scorer in the league with eight. Someone in this team is going to hit double figures, and things will generally make a little more straight-line sense. Gyökeres has 13 for the season overall. Wait. Is this … good?
And yes, you can dig a little. Alternate fact: the only Premier League teams he has scored against are Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Burnley, Everton and Sunderland. What he needs, still, is a big goal against a big team, a moment of real edge. But it feels closer. A few things do.
Nine points clear in February, games in hand notwithstanding, is a proper lead. It’s home straight stuff. You really, really should win a league from here. And the signs are good. Rice was excellent here in the two-man pivot, a nice little tweak in response to the problems against Manchester United. This is good management from Arteta, who was present again in faded gardening coat and midwinter grey slacks, a shade of grey so astonishingly, insistently forgettable you have to feel there’s some kind of thought process at work here.
Arsenal had four largely attacking players at the start. They had used seven by the end. Their most defensive midfielder scored the opening goal, a wonderful low drive that veered into the corner form outside the line of the posts.
And Gyökeres apart, the bedrock was, as ever, the defence. Arsenal had their first choice back four here: Timber-Gabriel-Saliba-Calafiori. It’s an elite lineup. Calafiori, who has been missing in recent times, was stirring in his drives down the left, a romping, galloping cheekbone flexing vision of elite footballerdom, and a proper full-back athlete, all flying hair, muscles, jawline, medieval in his handsomeness.
That first-choice back four has conceded one goal in the league at home all season, the Erling Haaland breakaway in September. It has also managed to start only nine games, seven ending in clean sheets. Keep them together from here. Wring more of the same out of the buttock-bouncing goal bludgeon up front. And anything does seem possible.
