Viktor Gyokeres was only a substitute once again as Arsenal beat Leeds today and Stuart Pearce has made a telling comment about the Swedish striker.
Gyokeres was hoping to start but saw Kai Havertz return from injury to once again get the nod in attack.
Instead, Gyokeres came off the bench with around 25 minutes to play and overall, struggled once again.
Indeed, former England man Stuart Pearce believes Gyokeres is very much at rock bottom, in terms of confidence.
“Well, you’re looking at a player, basically, that’s playing with no confidence whatsoever, in my opinion. I covered the Ipswich game in the League Cup, in the Carabao Cup, and the ten players on the pitch played extremely well. They made a lot of changes that day. Ten players played brilliantly. He was very, very average,” Pearce said on TalkSPORT.
“He looks as though he’s a person that doesn’t feel the love from Arteta, and certainly a miscontrol around the halfway line. He’s taken the ball off of Trafford and nothing came of it. And then he stumbled on the ball when he had a second chance of maybe getting a decent cross to a teammate, and it’s just not happening for him at the moment. And you just hope for his sake he can play his way out of that and contribute this season. But they’re going to need options in that attacking area.”
Viktor Gyokeres has no reason to have no confidence
Last season, Gyokeres came in for a lot of criticism but ultimately, he ended up having a solid season and was a key reason behind Arsenal’s success.
However, this season, he looks a shadow of that player and it’s safe to say that Mikel Arteta very much considers Kai Havertz as his number one striker.
Nevertheless, there is simply no reason for Gyokeres to be coming into games with no confidence. At international level, Gyokeres has just scored for a record 7th Nations League game running. If that isn’t enough – given he scored in each of the three fixtures this break – to bloom a bit of self belief, then it’s hard to imagine what is.
Mikel Arteta and Arsene Wenger
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Of course, there may be an element of Gyokeres performing better under Graham Potter right now. But at the end of the day, he’s playing in one of the best teams in Europe at Arsenal, there is simply no reason for him not to bring anything to the table.
Right now, Gyokeres needs to be performing and making the most of his minutes when he gets them.
Blaming a lack of confidence is a bit of a cop out and ultimately, he just has to do better.