Based on the 2024/25 Premier League season, there is little doubt that both Arsenal and Manchester United could do with signing a world-class goalscorer. Arsenal need more goals to help them get over the line and win the league, or perhaps Champions League. United, meanwhile, need to finish a lot higher up the table than their appalling 15th-place finish of last term.
The good news for these clubs is that there appears to be a prime candidate who has been banging in the goals for fun in recent times: Viktor Gyökeres. He’s scored an admirable 97 goals in 102 appearances for his current club Sporting, with 68 of those coming in 66 Portuguese top-flight games. With a release clause of around £85m, it would seem like excellent value based on current transfer fees.
But should either Mikel Arteta or Ruben Amorim (Gyökeres’s former manager at Sporting) sanction the signing? In recent days, doubts have crept in as the Swedish striker appears to have thrown his toys out of the pram.
What Is Gyökeres’s Beef?
🚨 || Viktor #Gyökeres🇸🇪 wants to move to #Arsenal🏴 and believes a deal can be struck. He’s ready to speak to #SportingCP🇵🇹 and demand they respect the agreement they had with him [Via – @Record_Portugal]. pic.twitter.com/RsQQ56BuVP
— Dean James (@DeanJamesAFC) June 20, 2025
According to reports in the Mirror newspaper, Gyökeres has become frustrated with his current club who he perceives as blocking his potential move to the Premier League. According to sources close to the player, the Swede has refused talks with the club and has even reportedly threatened to go on strike. The problem appears to be a so-called “gentleman’s agreement” that may or may not have occurred between the player and his representatives, and the club at the end of the 2023/24 campaign.
Apparently, Gyökeres was told that if he stayed for another season, he could get a transfer at a fee below the official release clause amount. The disagreement appears to be whether or not a specific figure was agreed upon, with the player claiming he was told he’d be fine to leave if a club paid around £60m… something the Sporting president claims is untrue.
Whatever the truth about the agreement, the fact remains that the figure in black and white on the player’s contract is almost certainly the one that clubs will have to pay to gain the Swedish sharpshooter’s services. Or certainly something very, very close to it. But if the rumours of him threatening to strike are true, could this put off Arsenal or United, neither of whom would be overly keen on an ego-driven player with a boat-rocking mentality. On the other hand… he has scored a LOT of goals.
How Good is Gyökeres?
There’s little doubt that Gyökeres is a very good finisher – his figures speak for themselves. As well as his scoring rate of more than 100% in the Portuguese top flight, he’s also netted six goals in eight Champions League matches and five in nine in the Europa League. In addition, he has 15 goals in 26 national-team appearances too.
There could be question marks about the likelihood that he would maintain such impressive scoring stats in the Premier League, however. Prior to Amorim signing him for Sporting, he played for Coventry City in the Championship for two and a half seasons. Over the course of his two full seasons at the club, he scored 40 goals in 97 games, with 38 coming in 91 Championship matches.
To put that in perspective, to an extent, during the 2022/23 season, he was the second-top scorer in the division with 21 league goals. He was behind Chuba Akpom of Middlesbrough, who netted 28, and one ahead of Luton Town’s Carlton Morris. As Luton got promoted, Morris was able to test his scoring boots in the Premier League the following season. Despite playing in all 38 top-flight games, Morris was only able to score 11 league goals. Akpom, meanwhile, moved to Ajax and scored just 11 goals in 26 Eredivisie matches.
Obviously, there are many factors affecting how many goals a player will score in a given season, but this perhaps at least suggests that scoring plenty in the English second tier does not automatically translate to scoring a hatful in the Premier League (or indeed the Dutch top flight).
On the flip side, playing for a relatively poor Luton side who only won six Premier League games is very different to playing for an Arsenal side who are likely to create plenty more goalscoring opportunities. What’s more, the Swede was learning his trade back then and has developed into a world-class striker in Portugal, and having recently turned 27 is very much in his prime now.
But it remains to be seen whether Arteta would prefer to avoid a player who is willing to throw his weight around to try to force a transfer. It’s certainly not the kind of behaviour that might impress the Gunners boss who is very much “team first”. Of course, you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, particularly when it comes to football transfer wranglings.
A Brief History of Viktor Gyökeres
Born in Stockholm in June 1998, he began his professional football career with Brommapojkarna where he spent two and a half seasons, around two in the Swedish second tier, one in the third. He scored 25 goals in 67 games for the club and caught the eye of the ever-astute scouts of Premier League side Brighton. Despite joining the club in January 2018, he never made a single Premier League appearance and was instead loaned out to various clubs including FC St Pauli in the German second tier, and Swansea and then Coventry in the Championship.
He didn’t score many for Coventry during his loan spell but the club saw enough to convince them to sign him on a permanent basis, and that’s when he started banging in the goals. A return of 17 goals in 45 games wasn’t bad and then he followed up, as mentioned, with 21 in 46 games in 2022/23. That attracted the eye of Everton and other top-flight clubs but the player opted for Portugal.
The move to Sporting followed that season and his near 100% scoring rate saw him attract a lot more attention from some of the biggest teams in Europe. He made his international debut for Sweden in 2019, and to date he has scored a goal every 1.7 games for his nation. At the time of writing, there have apparently been no firm bids to sign the striker, so the question is, will either Arsenal or Man United bite the bullet and buy the man who scored 39 goals in 33 league games last term? Fans of both clubs would certainly be over the moon if he could recreate such scoring stats for their team, that’s for sure.