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A decade ago, Arsenal should have won the Premier League. They didn’t. They failed not because shock champions Leicester City were better in the big games, since Arsenal defeated them home and away, but because Leicester were better in all the other games.
Leicester ended up finishing 10 points clear of Arsenal, despite losing to them twice. In other words, Claudio Ranieri’s side achieved fully 16 more points than the north Londoners against the other 18 teams in the Premier League.
Arsene Wenger’s boys suffered some daft losses that season — away at 14th-place finishers West Bromwich Albion, and at home to Swansea City, who came 12th. Leicester did not. Aside from those two Arsenal defeats, they were beaten only once, away at Liverpool. They collected 52 points from a possible 60 against the eventual 10 bottom-half clubs.
Their counter-attacking style meant you’d expect them to cause problems against sides playing open football, but suffer against deeper blocks. But they didn’t. And, in part, this was because they had a player who, that season, was a bit of a flat-track bully.
The tall, slightly ungainly Leonardo Ulloa was not an outstanding footballer. But he scored an 89th-minute winner in a 1-0 win over eventually-relegated Norwich City in the run-in. He scored and assisted in a 3-0 victory at Newcastle United, who also went down. Other goals came against Swansea, West Ham United and Stoke City. He didn’t net any against title challengers but Ulloa, an Argentinian signed from then Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion, and whose best goalscoring season had come in the Spanish second division for Almeria, bashed in a few against some weaker sides.
Leonardo Ulloa played an important role in Leicester’s Premier League title win (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
That, more or less, is what Viktor Gyokeres has been for Arsenal this season.
Even given his recent improvement, Gyokeres has not been a great success story in his debut year at the Emirates Stadium following an initial €63.5million (£55.3m/$73.3m at the current rates) move from Sporting CP in Portugal.
At various points, he’s looked sluggish, his touch has been poor, and he’s made the wrong runs when his team-mates are crossing the ball. But Gyokeres is, at least, the top scorer for the Premier League leaders. And Arsenal haven’t lost to anyone lower than fifth in the current table. They’ve dropped only six points against bottom-half opposition, while nearest challengers Manchester City have dropped 15.
The Swede has scored three goals against 15th-placed Leeds United, two against both Tottenham Hotspur in 16th and 12th-placed Sunderland, another against fourth-bottom Nottingham Forest, and one against 19th-placed Burnley. He’s only scored once against a top-half club, in a 1-0 win at Everton, and that was from the penalty spot. And he’s not a flawless flat-track bully either: in recent draws against Brentford and Wolverhampton Wanderers, he hasn’t even attempted a shot. But he’s just about found the net enough to win Arsenal some must-win games.
In matches against the likes of City and Liverpool, Gyokeres has been largely ineffective. All being well, manager Mikel Arteta would not have started him in those contests.
A fit Kai Havertz, superior at dropping deep and linking play, would surely have been used instead. But Havertz has only been fit enough to participate in four Premier League matches this season.
In his two starts among the four, recent wins against Leeds and Sunderland, Arteta has deployed Havertz in midfield and the main beneficiary of this has been Gyokeres, who has been more connected to the rest of the side. Indeed, the first of two goals in the 3-0 defeat of Sunderland came from a neat Havertz through ball — the type of service he simply hasn’t received from Martin Odegaard or Eberechi Eze.
Gyokeres is what might be considered a ‘Saturday 3pm striker’, a term that admittedly makes less sense in the era of more televised matches than ever. But he is not your man for the big Super Sunday contests against title rivals.
He’s probably not your man for big Champions League knockout ties either. He’s your man for sticking it in the onion bag against teams who turn up at the Emirates and play for a goalless draw — the types of fixtures that are traditionally not chosen for live TV broadcast because they feel like foregone conclusions.
But you do still have to win those games, and many title challenges — Liverpool in 2008-09, to use another example — have fallen short due to too many failures in such seemingly easy matches.
This, after all, is what Gyokeres is accustomed to.
The problem with buying a striker from a team in Portugal is — to be a little pedantic — not that the Portuguese top flight is weak. The problem is that the Portuguese league is unequal.
A post-Gyokeres Sporting are currently the 16th-best team in the world game, according to Opta’s rankings. Their biggest domestic rivals Benfica and Porto are also in the top 35. These are very good sides. But those in the bottom half of the 18-team Primeira Liga are rated between 389th and 900th globally, which roughly spans the gap between top and bottom in League One, the third tier of English football.
Gyokeres scored a Champions League hat-trick against Man City while at Sporting (Filipe Amorim/AFP via Getty Images)
So Gyokeres attracted Arsenal by banging in goals against much weaker opponents, which is largely his job now.
Of course, he did also look pretty good when scoring a hat-trick for Sporting against City in the league phase of last season’s Champions League, and Arsenal wouldn’t turn down some goals from him when facing good sides, too. But ‘big games’ are essentially overrated in league football. Look through the history of the Premier League and the head-to-head clashes between the title challengers rarely decide the destination of said title.
There are plenty of sports where you simply cannot win the biggest prizes by being effective at beating up low-ranked opponents. You won’t win a world boxing title, as you’ll probably have to defeat the reigning champion. You won’t win a tennis Grand Slam event — unless all the big seeds suffer surprise defeats.
But actually, you can win the Premier League by being average against good sides, but effective against the bottom-half ones. And it’s worth pointing out that the bottom-half sides are better today than they’ve ever been.
Regardless of Gyokeres’ variable output, he rarely looks good, with the notable exception of his performance against Tottenham, when there was a newfound sharpness to his game. But maybe that sums up the 2025-26 Premier League; a scruffy, attritional campaign based around battling and fighting.
There have never been points awarded for artistic merit, but more than ever, this season is just about getting the job done.