Mikel Arteta has called on everyone to leave Viktor Gyokeres alone and get behind him, in light of the attention the striker is getting for his stop-start spell at Arsenal so far.
During the embargoed section of Mikel Arteta’s pre-Wolves press conference on Friday, the Arsenal manager was asked for his assessment of summer signing Viktor Gyokeres so far – both in terms of his initial expectations and how things have panned out.
“Well, two things. First of all, a lot of excitement as it happened because we were bringing in a proven goal scorer that had probably the best stats in Europe,” Arteta began.
“And the second one, a player that comes to a different league, most demanding league in the world, what happens if he doesn’t score for five or six games? That was my only question.
“How are you going to react if you don’t score in five or six games? Can you cope with that? And then what’s going to happen in the next 100 games? And that’s what we have to see.”
“Again, the sample is very small,” Arteta added. “Leave him alone, let him do what he does best, be behind him and I’m sure things will turn out in the right way.
“Working, understanding what he needs more, understanding the things he needs to tweak in this league, in our team, to be more prolific and to be in more dangerous positions.
“The other night he had two big chances as well and put him as much as possible in that position and he will do for sure what he wants because he wants it so badly as well.”
Gyokeres has scored six goals for Arsenal so far, and he was starting to look impressive before his injury at the start of November. But that injury put him out of action just when he was getting going, and he’s yet to score since returning.
In fairness, Wednesday’s match was the striker’s first start since November 1st, so it would be understandable if he’s not fully sharp just yet.
But six goals from 18 games (14 starts) isn’t close to the sort of numbers Gyokeres has been putting up for the last couple of years. He scored 54 in 52 games last season, 43 in 50 the season before.
He’ll know he can do better, but Arteta is right to suggest the best chance of that happening is if everyone gets behind the 27-year-old and supports him through his tricky start.