Sporting CP playmaker Pedro Gonçalves warned that it took time for the whole team to adjust to Viktor Gyökeres’s preferred style of play which didn’t suit an approach based around short passing—precisely the system that Mikel Arteta has painstakingly implemented at Arsenal over the last half-decade.
Gyökeres joined Sporting in 2023 after spending the previous three years in the Championship. England’s second tier had belatedly unearthed the forward’s prolific potential, but there wasn’t a great deal of refinement around his game. Goals were all that mattered. As his Coventry City manager Mark Robins once reflected: “If he didn’t score after a game he’d be in a foul mood.”
Prior to Gyökeres’s arrival, Ruben Amorim had crafted Sporting into a possession-centric side with a fluid frontline—the club’s first title under the future Manchester United coach came while Gonçalves, a waifish No. 10, was the club’s top scorer.
The introduction of Gyökeres forced a significant overhaul for everyone which was not always easygoing. “With Viktor, it took us longer to adapt because he wasn’t a player who sought connections, first touches, and those one-twos, but rather depth,” Gonçalves explained to Sporting’s official website.
“At that time, it was harder for me to adapt to his style of play, but since then, he’s made history for the club, as we know it.”
That desire to hare beyond the opposition’s rearguard is borne out in the numbers. Gyökeres racked up 85 sprints in behind the defensive line across the 2024–25 campaign, according to SkillCorner (via The Athletic). To put that hulking tally in context, it’s more than double the next most prolific striker in Portugal and dwarfs the leading mark among all Premier League centre forwards from last season—Nicolas Jackson mustered 61 while at Chelsea.
Arsenal largely operated with Kai Havertz through the middle last term before injury forced midfielder Mikel Merino into an unfamiliar role. Both players were far more likely to drop off the frontline rather than dart towards goal as Arsenal sought to gradually build attacks through short passes.
The impact Gyökeres has had on the north Londoners has already been evident. Only Manchester City boasted a larger proportion of passes which travelled less than 15 yards than the Gunners last term. This season, half the division is more likely to play it short than Arteta’s evolving side.
Sporting were clearly able to adapt. Gyökeres would go on to plunder 97 goals in 102 games for the club while lifting back-to-back league titles.
Despite some early concerns over his adaptation to the physical demands of Arsenal’s intense work when out of possession, Gyökeres has shown flickers of the clinical edge which convinced the club to splash as much as £64 million ($86.3 million) this summer.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Doubts Over Viktor Gyokeres’s Arsenal Adaptation Raised by Ex-Teammate’s Admission.
