Despite losing the Carabao Cup final to Manchester City just before the March international break, Arsenal still have the meat of the 2025/26 season in front of them.
The Gunners lead the Premier League standings by nine points, with City a full three wins adrift while holding a game in hand. With seven games left for Mikel Arteta's side, they have their destiny fully in their own hands, chasing their first league title since the Invincibles in 2004.
On the European front, Arsenal are still one of the favourites to win the Champions League, drawn against Sporting CP in the quarterfinals of Europe's top competition. Even as defending champions Paris Saint-Germain and the competition's all-time titles leader Real Madrid remain alive, along with fellow European giants Barcelona, Liverpool, and Bayern Munich, Arsenal are believed to be one of the most likely sides to emerge victorious.
One of their key pieces of this season is their marquee summer signing Viktor Gyokeres, who was brought in from Sporting for a big transfer fee. As the Sweden international gets set to face his former club in European play, it's worth looking back at the season to assess how he has settled in north London.
MORE: Where Viktor Gyokeres sits amongst the Premier League's top goal scorers
How much did Arsenal pay for Viktor Gyokeres?
In the summer of 2025, Arsenal needed a striker to fill out their talented attacking lineup. Many pundits argued that the Gunners were simply a strong No. 9 away from competing for trophies, having finished second-best to Manchester City in the Premier League race for three years running.
With a number of strikers on the market, such as Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Victor Osimhen, Benjamin Sesko, and Nick Woltemade, Arsenal landed on Sporting CP frontman Gyokeres, who they snatched for a fee that could reportedly rise to £63.5 million ($83.9m).
Considering most of the other strikers on the market were younger, it was a hefty sum to pay for a 27-year-old who had tried once already to play in England and left, having spent a short time at Brighton and Hove Albion and Coventry City before his move to the Portuguese giants.
According to Capology, Gyokeres is on a basic wage of £200,000 per week (€229,000 / $264,000) on a five-year contract that runs through the summer of 2030.
Was Viktor Gyokeres a good signing for Arsenal?
Obviously, this is a highly subjective question.
We can look at it from a number of perspectives, including how he's performed in a vacuum, how he's performed compared to expectations, how he's performed compared to other players around England and Europe, and what Arsenal have achieved since he has arrived.
Let's break it down by lens.
Viktor Gyokeres goals, stats for Arsenal
The debate begins with a look at the Sweden international's pure numerical output, which does not reflect terribly kindly on him.
Through his first 43 appearances of the season, Gyokeres has scored 17 goals, 11 of which have come in the Premier League. It is a modest total, and one that has an upward trajectory. Through Arsenal's first 23 Premier League matches, of which Gyokeres appeared in 21, he had scored just four goals, but he has bagged six in his last eight appearances, including a pair of braces.
His Champions League return has also been modest, with four goals in eight total appearances. He scored a brace in the 4-0 win over Atletico Madrid, as well as goals against Inter Milan and Kairat Almaty, but he was blanked in their Round of 16 matches against Bayer Leverkusen.
Gyokeres was also held off the scoresheet in the FA Cup final against Man City, which Arsenal lost by a 2-0 score.
From a finishing standpoint, Gyokeres has scored his 11 Premier League goals on 9.35 expected goals (xG), plus four Champions League goals on 4.33 xG, meaning he has finished at an above-average rate. It's therefore evident that Gyokeres is converting the chances he has been given, and his relative struggles can be chalked up in part to an inability to get him enough opportunities — essentially, Arteta's tactics have harmed his opportunity to compile goals.
Competition Games Goals Assists
Premier League 29 11 0
UEFA Champions League 8 4 1
EFL Cup 4 1 1
FA Cup 2 1 0
TOTAL 43 17 2
What were the expectations for Viktor Gyokeres at Arsenal?
Any assessment of how Gyokeres has performed in his first season for Arsenal should be framed around the expectations for the player upon his signing last summer.
The club paid significant money to sign him but passed up bigger deals for the likes of Sesko, Isak and Ekitike. The rationale in signing Gyokeres was that he would bring a goal-scoring prowess that was fully developed and ready to contribute now without breaking the bank, passing up the younger options for players with a higher ceiling that could require some time to develop.
Fans were extremely excited, with Gyokeres breaking the record for kit sales by a new signing, according to reports. Arsenal sporting director Andrea Berta said the Swede would have a "major impact" on the club.
In his final season with Sporting, Gyokeres scored an astounding 54 goals across all competitions, including 39 in 33 league games plus another six in eight Champions League matches. Kicking the ball very hard was his most notable trait, and he was expected to bring that prowess with him to London.
Yet there was an understanding that his old level of production would, in some way, fail to fully translate. He was, of course, stepping up in the level of competition and would also be joining a team with significant attacking talent with whom he would be sharing the end product.
So far, the return for Gyokeres seems to be just barely on pace for the minimum by which he could be considered a success. His sluggish start to the season was well below expectations, but the recent flurry of goals has done enough to get him back to within more acceptable parameters. It has been far from a smashing success, but it has not been a failure either, instead falling somewhere right in between.
Assessing Viktor Gyokeres's other contributions at Arsenal
It's unavoidable that Gyokeres was signed for Arsenal to score goals, but it remains true that a big part of analysing his play this season centers around his peripheral contributions.
While Gyokeres was brought in to put the ball in the net, not to fit some tactical jigsaw, he has instead done the opposite. Instead of lighting up the score sheet, the narrative around Gyokeres has shifted from goals first to his role within Arteta's system.
A look at his heat map on SofaScore shows as much. Instead of the massive red blob one might expect from a target-man No. 9 such as Erling Haaland, Gyokeres shows a touch map that is far more scattered throughout the attacking half. He often crops up both in midfield and out on the wings, combining in the attack with the likes of Bukayo Saka and others.
Gyokeres has also been important holding up the ball in possession, something his international manager Graham Potter pointed out after the recent March international break in which Gyokeres scored four goals in two games to lead Sweden in a successful chase for World Cup qualification.
"Outside of the goals, because to score a hat-trick is one thing — overall, his hold-up play and his defensive responsibility for the team was part of an incredible performance," Potter said after Gyokeres bagged a triple against Ukraine in the playoff semifinal.
Gyokeres is to be assessed on goals first and foremost, but his other capabilities have been highlighted throughout this season and have been important to Arsenal's setup.
Putting it all together
So, with all this information, how successful has Gyokeres been in his first season at Arsenal?
So far, yes, he has been a success, but only just. There is still the most important part of the season to play out, both on the Premier League and Champions League front. He has done just enough to this point, but the jury is mostly still out.
If Gyokeres plays a role in Arsenal finishing the season off with one or more trophies, he will be considered an outright success by all accounts. If, however, Arsenal collapse and once again finish the season with nothing, he will unquestionably be considered a first-season flop.
For the most part, his success has yet to be determined, but to this point, the thumbs are ever so slightly up.