Arteta, the centre striker he had been hankering after, finally scores a goal after nine games to thrill his manager about what’s ahead.
Perhaps Arsenal fans will remember this evening as the day that his luck turned around if Viktor Gyökeres ends up being the striker they had been hoping for. It makes no difference how they enter, as the old striker’s motto says.
During a thrilling second half in which Mikel Arteta’s team once again demonstrated their seriousness this season, Gyökeres scored from close range via a deflection off David Hancko, sending a huge wave of relief over the Emirates Stadium after nine games for club and country ended without a goal and pressure mounted on the player who was signed for £64 million in the summer.
Less than three minutes later, to the delight of the home crowd, he kneeled in from Gabriel Magalhães’s header after a Declan Rice corner to finish the rout against Atletico Madrid. His mask celebration, which was modelled after the villain Bane in Batman and featured the catchphrase “nobody cared until I put on the mask”, was given another airing.
The centre-forward Arteta craved ends a nine-match goal drought
This has been one of the most difficult times in his career because he hasn’t scored since the victory over Nottingham Forest here on September 13. Following Sweden’s defeats against Kosovo and Switzerland in World Cup qualifying over the past two weeks, Gyökeres came under heavy fire; one publication called his performance against the latter invisible.
The issue is obviously not his finishing, since he scored an amazing 54 goals in 52 games across all competitions for Sporting last season. Even though Arteta hasn’t had many opportunities, his all-around play has offered Arsenal a new dimension in attack, as he has often noted.
This was undoubtedly evident in the first half of this excellent contest between two sides that had appeared to be evenly matched at first. Gyökeres rushed around like a bull in a china shop in the early going, giving the impression that he was trying too hard to impress.
