Top 10 ranked 

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While Arsenal will certainly feel plenty of pressure in the first leg of their Round of 16 tie against Sporting in the Champions League, no player will perhaps feel it more than striker Viktor Gyökeres. The Sweden international swapped the latter for the former last summer for a fee of €66.9 million in a deal that currently stands as the North London club’s sixth most expensive signing of all time. However, while Gyökeres certainly earned that fee with his prolific goalscoring in Liga Portugal, the same can’t be said for his time in North London.

Indeed, the towering No.9 broke all sorts of records in Lisbon as he made a mockery of the €24m Sporting paid for his services back in 2023. Over the course of 102 games across all competitions, Gyökeres bagged an incredible 977 goals and 28 assists. That works out at a remarkable rate of 1.34 goals or assists per 90 minutes of football for the Portuguese giants. However, since making the move to North London, the 27-year-old talisman has managed just 17 goals and two assists in 43 games for his new club, averaging a rather bland 0.61 goals and assists per 90 in all competitions for Arsenal. That’s by no means a bad return, but it’s less than half what Mikel Arteta and his backroom staff may have been expecting when they signed the Stockholm-born talent.

As such, when Gyökeres takes to the field to face his former club, he’ll undoubtedly have a renewed desire to prove not only his worth to his new club and help them progress to the next round of the Champions League, but to also show that he was indeed worthy of being Sporting’s most expensive sale in the club’s history. So how does Gyökeres compare to Arsenal’s top strikers of the past? By taking a look at the club’s transfer history and ranking each forward based on their goals scored as a striker or second striker, we’ve pulled together a list of the cost-per-goal of Arsenal’s top 10 most expensive forwards of all time. And unfortunately, the Swedish talent doesn’t compare well against them at this moment in time.

As we can see in the table above, Gyökeres is currently sitting on 17 goals across all competitions for Arsenal. When we factor in his transfer fee it gives him an average of €3.9m per goal scored for the North London club. That, worryingly, is the second worst record for the ten most expensive strikers in Arsenal’s history. Only Lucas Pérez, the somewhat forgotten signing of Arsene Wenger’s tenure, ranks worse with just three goals scored after joining the club for €20m. Third on the list with an equally unenviable return for the club is Kai Havertz, who has managed just 22 goals as a centre forward or second striker at the club despite costing around €75m – although it’s worth noting here that much of the German international’s time at Arsenal has been spent in midfield, even if we didn’t include those games and goals scored in that position today.

Intiguinely, Arteta has a striker within his squad who already offers a better return in front of goal. Sitting in fourth place is Brazilian talent Gabriel Jesus, who has averaged €1.7m per goal scored for the club since he swapped Manchester City for Arsenal for €52m. Had injuries not scuppered the centre forward’s time at Arsenal, he may have negated the need for Arsenal to sign Gyökeres in the first place. But now that Jesus has returned from injury, his more prolific form in front of goal may jeapordise the Swedish striker’s spot in the starting XI.

If Gyökeres really wants to prove his worth at the club in the long-term, he’ll have to find a way to rival some of hte names near the bottom of the top 10. Whether it be Alexis Sanchez (€1.6m per goal scored), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (€1.1m) or perhaps most notably Alexandre Lacazette, who cost the club just €0.3m per goal scored during his time in North London, there’s little doubt that Gyökeres will have to score considerably more goals to get close to that kind of return.

However, that may not be as absurb an idea as first thought. When we tally up the goalscoring rate of all 10 strikers, Gyökeres’s rate of 0.40 goals per game is actually the third best among the star-studded line up, second only to Aubameyang (0.54) and Sanchez (0.60). So while the Swede may not seem like a smart signing at this moment in time, his rate of goals suggests that he may go on to offer more for Arsenal than most of the club’s most expensive strikers of yesteryear.