Viktor Gyokeres has been voted the Premier League Player of the Matchweek for his performance away to Tottenham Hotspur, earning over a third of the overall vote.
The Premier League have confirmed that Viktor Gyokeres is their Player of the Matchweek for the last round of fixtures, noting that he’s the fourth Arsenal player to receive the accolade this season.
Eberechi Eze (vs Spurs at home), Leandro Trossard (vs Aston Villa at home), and Declan Rice (vs Bournemouth away) were the three players to previously be awarded Player of the Matchweek this season.
This time around, Gyokeres beat Eze, Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly, Leeds United’s Anton Stach, Brighton’s James Milner, Crystal Palace’s Dean Henderson, and Fulham’s Raul Jimenez to the award.
In some ways, Arsenal were disadvantaged in this case by the fact they had two players involved in the vote, splitting their own fanbase.
Eze earned 20% of the vote, only putting him narrowly behind second-place O’Reilly with 22%. Considering Gyokeres brought in 35%, that means well over half of the votes cast were for one of the two Arsenal players.
None of the other four candidates earned more than 10% of the vote, so it was only O’Reilly’s two goals against Newcastle United that threatened to stop Gyokeres.
Gyokeres also scored twice, as well as being involved in the build-up to one of Eze’s goals. But the significance of the game likely also helped him to earn votes, as it was away from home in the north London derby.
There won’t be many players who score twice away from home in the north London derby and don’t win Player of the Matchweek. Unfortunately, Eze is now one of them, but given he won the award in the home fixture, he probably won’t be too upset.