82 Premier League goals: Arsenal almost signed better striker than Gyokeres for less money

Arsenal must be starting to regret their move to sign Viktor Gyokeres this summer after his very obvious struggles adapting to the Premier League.

Gyokeres was hugely prolific at former club Sporting Lisbon, finding the back of the net a staggering 97 times in 102 appearances across two seasons.

This prompted Arsenal to pay £64m to sign the Sweden international from Sporting last summer (fee via BBC Sport), with the deal looking like an exciting one to give Mikel Arteta a more natural goal-scorer than other forwards like Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus.

Arsenal will now surely be questioning if this was the right decision, however, as Gyokeres has not been nearly as impressive since coming to what is clearly a far more competitive league.

Viktor Gyokeres at Arsenal this season vs Sporting last season

Gyokeres needs to improve fast, because even if he was never likely to get quite as many goals for Arsenal as he did at Sporting, his numbers so far are well below what the club would have expected.

See below for some key stats comparing the 27-year-old’s form for Arsenal this season compared to how he played at Sporting last term…

Spending big on someone who’d never played in the Premier League was perhaps always going to be a bit of a gamble, so should Arsenal have opted to go all out for someone who’d already shown they can do it at this level?

Because just a few months earlier that’s what almost happened when they tried to sign Ollie Watkins from Aston Villa.

The England international has 82 goals in 205 Premier League games for Villa, and BBC Sport reported last January that the Gunners tried signing him for £60m.

That’s not a huge difference in terms of the fee, but it’s still slightly less for surely a far safer option to come in and give AFC the goal threat they needed.

Could Ollie Watkins have done a job for Arsenal?

Watkins has been a key player in this impressive Villa side, though it is worth noting that his own form has dipped slightly this season.

The 30-year-old has seven goals in 28 games in all competitions so far this season, so it doesn’t look like a given that he’ll match the 17 he got last year, and almost certainly not the 27 he got the year before.

Still, when you look at other key metrics, as in the graph below, you can also see that Watkins offers better all-round play than Gyokeres…

There are no guarantees in football, with Gyokeres alongside other big-name signings like Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz in proving disappointing this season, but Watkins looks like he could have been an option well worth considering for Arsenal.

The Villa front-man might only offer a similar kind of goal threat, but he is more of a handful for defenders with the number of touches he takes and the chances he creates for his teammates.

Arsenal ultimately decided this deal wasn’t worth it and went for Gyokeres instead, but how much will they live to regret it?

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