Arsenal already have their Julian Alvarez, and the numbers prove it

Julian Alvarez was the dream transfer target for Arsenal in the summer. The questions over the striker position remain, and he seemed the perfect fit. He'd played in the Premier League before with Man City, and looks likely to leave Atletico Madrid within the next year.

However, Arsenal didn't manage to get a deal done in the summer, despite a lot of transfer talk surrounding Alvarez. Instead, they went into the season with Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres, after selling Gabriel Jesus. It also doesn't look likely that Alvarez will join in the future either, as his preferred move is to Barcelona.

Havertz has been fantastic for the Gunners and had a great start to the season, but he now finds himself injured. Gyokeres had a good first season in North London, scoring 21 total goals last season. However, he has really struggled so far this year and is yet to start for Mikel Arteta.

Gyokeres will be expected to start against Leeds United this weekend due to Havertz's injury, and many at Arsenal will demand a better showing from him; if not, he could be benched once again.

Gyokeres can be Arsenal's Alvarez

The general opinion on Gyokeres is pretty negative. He hasn't lived up to the vast hype that the Premier League placed on him when he came to Arsenal from Sporting Lisbon, and also just hasn't passed the eye test.

However, a lot of the criticism isn't justified. According to statistics from Data MB, last season, Gyokeres was much more of a goal threat than Alvarez was for Atletico, and it wasn't really close.

Gyokeres' goal conversion percentage, aerial threat percentage, expected goals, and touches in the opposition's box were all higher than Alvarez's for Atletico. Plus, Gyokeres scored 21 goals last year compared to Alvarez's 20.

There is this obsession over an Alvarez-to-Arsenal move, but if last season proved anything, then it is that there is no reason why the Argentine would do any better than Gyokeres if he came to the Emirates. On top of that, Alvarez is likely to cost over £100 million, considerably more than Arsenal paid for Gyokeres last year.

All that the Swedish international needs to do now is show some of the form that he showed last year, now that he has a chance to play ahead of Havertz on Saturday afternoon. If he does that, then Arsenal really have no reason to 'upgrade' to Alvarez, as it may not be any sort of upgrade at all.

Add us as a preferred source on Google