Viktor Gyökeres | Ornstein: Arsenal in advanced talks

How is it "excessive" when he is literally entering his prime? We need an experienced striker in his prime and Gyokeres meets that player profile. We already tried with younger strikers and it's been a complete disaster.

All of our younger players have been utter sheite bar Yoro. Buying younger players only makes sense if they are generational talents or whatnot. Buying proven and "experienced" players in their prime like Cunha, Mbuemo and Gyokeres makes much more sense than forcing the likes of Holjund, Zirkzee, Garnacho (overhyped and mid "young" players with already a lot of experience).

He has almost no experience at the top level. His last four seasons have been in the English Championship and the Portuguese league, which is mid tier by European standards.

It would be a huge risk for us, I'd much rather go for Watkins or Mateta.
 
He has almost no experience at the top level. His last four seasons have been in the English Championship and the Portuguese league, which is mid tier by European standards.

It would be a huge risk for us, I'd much rather go for Watkins or Mateta.
Watkins is a great forward but Gyokeres is 3 years younger and has a better goal per 90 than Watkins. Gyokeres has scored 6 goals in 8 matches in this year's UCL and 10 goals in 7 matches for Sweden. If you exclude the Portuguese League, he still has insane stats in the UCL and for Sweden.

Bruno was 26 when he came to Utd and he also played for Sporting in the Portuguese League and look what he did in his time for Utd. Gyokeres was arguably a better player for Sporting than Bruno and he's also in his prime. Remember that we also got Nani and Ronaldo from the Portuguese League.

Gyokeres scored almost 100 goals in 2 seasons and even if he doesn't work out for us, you can't go back and say well we made a big mistake by signing him. Everything indicates that he's a top player and nothing indicated that Holjund, Zirkzee or Antony were top players. That's for me the major difference why I am way more confident about this deal than any other that we previously had.
 
If he chooses Arsenal then you simply have to respect his choice, I mean who would you choose? an unstable club that has just finished 15th, or a stable club that is challenging for titles and playing in the Champions League, sadly for us it's a no brainer to be fair.
Utd. Arse, serial bottlers. He would have Buemo, Cun, and Bruno feeding him all season.
 
If he chooses Arsenal then you simply have to respect his choice, I mean who would you choose? an unstable club that has just finished 15th, or a stable club that is challenging for titles and playing in the Champions League, sadly for us it's a no brainer to be fair.
A stable club that stably compete for top four and don't win anything of significance. Even the FA cups have dried up these days. If he had chosen Liverpool or City or even Chelsea, I'd understand.
 
Watkins is a great forward but Gyokeres is 3 years younger and has a better goal per 90 than Watkins. Gyokeres has scored 6 goals in 8 matches in this year's UCL and 10 goals in 7 matches for Sweden. If you exclude the Portuguese League, he still has insane stats in the UCL and for Sweden.

Bruno was 26 when he came to Utd and he also played for Sporting in the Portuguese League and look what he did in his time for Utd. Gyokeres was arguably a better player for Sporting than Bruno and he's also in his prime. Remember that we also got Nani and Ronaldo from the Portuguese League.

Gyokeres scored almost 100 goals in 2 seasons and even if he doesn't work out for us, you can't go back and say well we made a big mistake by signing him. Everything indicates that he's a top player and nothing indicated that Holjund, Zirkzee or Antony were top players. That's for me the major difference why I am way more confident about this deal than any other that we previously had.
Watkins did it in a top league
 
Gyokeres' agent came up with perfectly reasonable transfer fees based on market rate and if report were to be believed was included in the "gentlemen agreement".

However, Sporting's President came out with something totally blowing everyone away like 80M for a 27 years old with no top flight experience.

Let him keep his unhappy player and we should move on to other target.
 
How is it "excessive" when he is literally entering his prime? We need an experienced striker in his prime and Gyokeres meets that player profile. We already tried with younger strikers and it's been a complete disaster.

All of our younger players have been utter sheite bar Yoro. Buying younger players only makes sense if they are generational talents or whatnot. Buying proven and "experienced" players in their prime like Cunha, Mbuemo and Gyokeres makes much more sense than forcing the likes of Holjund, Zirkzee, Garnacho (overhyped and mid "young" players with already a lot of experience).

Because he plays in the Portugese league. We also tried experienced strikers in the past like Ighalo, Falcao..

Buying proven players in top divisions is fair but not when they are playing in the Portuguese league and the price is over £70m.
 
Because he plays in the Portugese league. We also tried experienced strikers in the past like Ighalo, Falcao..

Buying proven players in top divisions is fair but not when they are playing in the Portuguese league and the price is over £70m.
I see the general point but the examples you gave are not great. Ighalo was no way near as prolific and well past his prime. Falcao was also a crock by the time we bought him. Prime Falcao (pre injury) was a phenom.
 
I see the general point but the examples you gave are not great. Ighalo was no way near as prolific and well past his prime. Falcao was also a crock by the time we bought him. Prime Falcao (pre injury) was a phenom.

Even if its not those players, we have bough plenty of players and in the last 12 years only Bruno you can say has been a success.
 
Not convinced that Arsenal going to sign him….he is back up in their negotiations for Sesko.
 
Even if its not those players, we have bough plenty of players and in the last 12 years only Bruno you can say has been a success.
Depends how you want to quantify. Zlatan was a free signing and a big success while he was here. Lukaku came for big money, got 26 goals or so in year one, then a respectful enough tally the next year and left. Cavani came on lower fee and did fine.

What is success for you, just longevity? Or is it a mixture of output and system fit, bang for buck too?
 
Depends how you want to quantify. Zlatan was a free signing and a big success while he was here. Lukaku came for big money, got 26 goals or so in year one, then a respectful enough tally the next year and left. Cavani came on lower fee and did fine.

What is success for you, just longevity? Or is it a mixture of output and system fit, bang for buck too?

Success for me is not just having 1 good season personally and the team doesn't do well. We need the consistent performances for a few seasons.

Especially if we are going to spend over 70m on a ST who has his best seasons in the Portugese league. Somewhere where no ST who has done well there gone on to do well elsewhere.
 
Maybe they are going to sign both after neglecting the position for so long, Chelsea certainly would
they’ll spend 90 million each on two players who want to be starters?

Chelsea would do that, but at more realistic pricing like 30mil and 50 million.
 
Viktor is not fecking around, even broke up with his Portuguese Girlfriend.
Doesn’t want any strings attached to this country ahah
 
Viktor is not fecking around, even broke up with his Portuguese Girlfriend.
Doesn’t want any strings attached to this country ahah
Ha ha. Or maybe he broke up with his Portuguese girlfriend because he IS fecking around :lol:
 
Because he plays in the Portugese league. We also tried experienced strikers in the past like Ighalo, Falcao..

Buying proven players in top divisions is fair but not when they are playing in the Portuguese league and the price is over £70m.
Ighalo wasn't good enough in the first place and Falcao came injured to Utd. According to your logic we shouldn't have bought Bruno or Ronaldo because they played in the Portuguese League.

And we are talking about a prolific striker who scored almost 100 goals in 2 seasons for Sporting. Our best player in the post Fergie era Bruno literally came (directly) from that league. And we splashed a lot of money for Ronaldo and Bruno. Ronaldo was the most expensive teenager in British football history and Bruno was the second most expensive transfer that came from the Portuguese League.
 
Because he plays in the Portugese league. We also tried experienced strikers in the past like Ighalo, Falcao..

Buying proven players in top divisions is fair but not when they are playing in the Portuguese league and the price is over £70m.
What would you class as a top division. Italy seems to have dropped off a cliff recently so I'd count them out. Germany seems too open... Look at Sancho's numbers and clips at Dortmund to realise how poor some of the defending is. France doesn't have quality beyond a couple of teams. That basically leaves you with Spain and even then it is only the Premier League that has genuine difficult games every match. Does that mean we should only buy local? Ultimately every purchase has an element of risk. You can't avoid it.
 
What would you class as a top division. Italy seems to have dropped off a cliff recently so I'd count them out. Germany seems too open... Look at Sancho's numbers and clips at Dortmund to realise how poor some of the defending is. France doesn't have quality beyond a couple of teams. That basically leaves you with Spain and even then it is only the Premier League that has genuine difficult games every match. Does that mean we should only buy local? Ultimately every purchase has an element of risk. You can't avoid it.
There's an article here about the currrent Opta Power rankings, which is interesting.

https://theanalyst.com/articles/strongest-leagues-in-the-world-opta-power-rankings-june-2025
 
Arsenal need to make decision fast. If Arsenal go for Sesko then Gyokeres only option is us.

But then again, I thought we only want player that want to play for us. Not coming for CL.
 
I’m beginning to believe the Watkins rumours. If we could get Gyorkeres surely we’d have prioritised him giving everybody seems to be after him and we had a free run at Cunha and Mbeumo as they both wanted us.

I feel his move is sealed (Arsenal maybe) and we are scrapping around for something else.
The top striker market does not exist unless you go blow your whole budget on it.
 
Pretty sure we’ll get to hear within the next 48hrs whether he’s officially moving to Arsenal or not. Seems almost a certainty he’ll not be coming here though.
 
We can't even wrap up a deal for Mbeumo because we're desperately penny pinching, and we're not close to making a single sale. Splashing out £60-70m on this lad is a pipedream, even if he did want to come here
 
What would you class as a top division. Italy seems to have dropped off a cliff recently so I'd count them out. Germany seems too open... Look at Sancho's numbers and clips at Dortmund to realise how poor some of the defending is. France doesn't have quality beyond a couple of teams. That basically leaves you with Spain and even then it is only the Premier League that has genuine difficult games every match. Does that mean we should only buy local? Ultimately every purchase has an element of risk. You can't avoid it.

I mean top 5 divisions in Europe. I agree that every purchase is a risk... especially if you talk about Manutd, the risk factor just increases because only 1 signing has done well in the last 12 years for us.

Which is why, we need to stay away from these players who will come under massive pressure because they are in their prime and done so well in other leagues.
 
Success for me is not just having 1 good season personally and the team doesn't do well. We need the consistent performances for a few seasons.

Especially if we are going to spend over 70m on a ST who has his best seasons in the Portugese league. Somewhere where no ST who has done well there gone on to do well elsewhere.

:lol: that's a pretty wild statement. Falcao was quite good at the old football.
 
So you can’t buy strikers from Portugal, Netherlands, France, Germany? Is Italy ok?

So that leaves La Liga and Premier league?
That’s narrowing down your options a lot.
 
So you can’t buy strikers from Portugal, Netherlands, France, Germany? Is Italy ok?

So that leaves La Liga and Premier league?
That’s narrowing down your options a lot.

Think people need to realise it’s a United problem not the club/player/league we are buying from issue. We identify the wrong players a lot of the time. Put players on inflated contracts that they stop working hard as they know they’ve reach their max earning threshold. United is the problem.
 
The fact that you can only find 1 player over 10 years ago shows what I mean.

Ramos at PSG is actually a very good player. Benni McCarthy did ok even though he was quite old when he left. Evanilson is good, and of course there is Jota (:() and Ronaldo you could count. Can't remember if Derlei left too, he was pretty good.

I think it's fair to say they produce more great wingers, AMs, CMs and CBs than strikers, but it doesn't mean they're all shit. I only mentioned Falcao because he's up there with the very best strikers I've ever seen.
 
Ramos at PSG is actually a very good player. Benni McCarthy did ok even though he was quite old when he left. Evanilson is good, and of course there is Jota (:() and Ronaldo you could count. Can't remember if Derlei left too, he was pretty good.

I think it's fair to say they produce more great wingers, AMs, CMs and CBs than strikers, but it doesn't mean they're all shit. I only mentioned Falcao because he's up there with the very best strikers I've ever seen.

Ramos is not even a starter at PSG.. Ronaldo was not hitting top scorer numbers in the league.

I think you are confusing the discussion now... I have not said there is no talent to come out of Portugese league because there clearly is.. Ruben Dias, Mendes, Enzo, Vitinha, Neves in recent years...

I am talking about strikers who score 30 goals in the league rarely repeat it outside of the league when moving to bigger clubs.
 
Ramos is not even a starter at PSG.. Ronaldo was not hitting top scorer numbers in the league.

I think you are confusing the discussion now... I have not said there is no talent to come out of Portugese league because there clearly is.. Ruben Dias, Mendes, Enzo, Vitinha, Neves in recent years...

I am talking about strikers who score 30 goals in the league rarely repeat it outside of the league when moving to bigger clubs.

There aren't exactly loads of strikers in Portugal scoring 30 goals though are there? I don't think their flop rate is any higher than any other leagues. Even Nuñez who I'm sure you're thinking of isn't a bad player, he's just not worth what Liverpool paid.

And I'm not the one mentioning midfielders to confuse the discussion, I'm mentioning forwards who also play on the wing or in the hole.

Talking about Ronaldo not top scoring in Portugal is just bizarre, he was 17 and playing on the wing FFS.
 
I am talking about strikers who score 30 goals in the league rarely repeat it outside of the league when moving to bigger clubs.

Only 5 players scored 20 or more in the PL last season. Our top scorer was 8. If he managed 20 in the league he’d be considered a massive success for us.
 
Even if its not those players, we have bough plenty of players and in the last 12 years only Bruno you can say has been a success.

Remind me again, which club did you buy him from...?

There aren't exactly loads of strikers in Portugal scoring 30 goals though are there? I don't think their flop rate is any higher than any other leagues. Even Nuñez who I'm sure you're thinking of isn't a bad player, he's just not worth what Liverpool paid.

And I'm not the one mentioning midfielders to confuse the discussion, I'm mentioning forwards who also play on the wing or in the hole.

Talking about Ronaldo not top scoring in Portugal is just bizarre, he was 17 and playing on the wing FFS.

Here's a little inside info, and this isn't just rivalry talking.
Always look at players from benfica with a grain of salt. They're masters at propaganda, at making their players look much MUCH better than they sometimes are.
I'm not saying this to imply that their players are always flops, or everyone else is the real deal, mind you.
Just pointing out that benfica and their prime mover Jorge Mendes are experts at selling.

Basically, the fact Viktor did what he did at Sporting should give you more confidence in his ability (and crucially, his desire) to do the same at the Premier League.
 
Having looked it up a little bit... no, I was wrong, this actually might be worse:
  • Jackson Martinez scored 20+ every year in Portugal, went to Atletico, did absolutely nothing.
  • Jonas went immediately from being a decent, unremarkable 1 in 3 forward in Spain to being a 1 in 1 player in Portugal for five seasons.
  • Haris Seferovic had two 20+ goal seasons in Portugal. Couldn't hit a barn door in any other league.
  • Darwin Nunez scored a goal a game there in his second season.
  • Bas fecking Dost scored 34 goals in 31 games one season. :lol:
Playing up front for one of the big three in Portugal is like playing in the back yard against your kids.

Okay. And that's a randomly chosen and representative list of strikers who did well in Portugal and then moved to a bigger league?
 
Okay. And that's a randomly chosen and representative list of strikers who did well in Portugal and then moved to a bigger league?
It's a list to show that a lot of naff strikers have put up very good numbers in that league. It's not a randomised controlled scientific study of the phenomenon.
 
It's a list to show that a lot of naff strikers have put up very good numbers in that league. It's not a randomised controlled scientific study of the phenomenon.
Sure, but there's 'very good numbers' and then what Gyokeres has done. 88 goals and 24 assist in 2 seasons, a goal or assist every 67mins. He's also bagged pretty well in the Europa and CL too. Pretty insane numbers.

He could flop, but there's a lot more to suggest he won't. Really hope we get him.