'Not good enough' - Gabriel Jesus will never be a great goalscorer, but can Arsenal still win the Premier League with the Brazilian up front?

It is, however, worth pointing out that having a prolific centre-forward is not a prerequisite for a Championship-winning team. Eric Cantona never netted more than 18 times across a single campaign during Manchester United's initial dominance of the Premier League, while Frank Lampard, a midfielder, was the most reliable source of goals in Jose Mourinho's fantastic first Chelsea side.

Even at Manchester City, where Sergio Aguero played his part in their emergence as a major force, most memorably on the final day of the 2011-12 season, and Haaland smashed the single-season goals record last term, they've never been overly reliant on a striker. Yaya Toure (20 goals), Ilkay Gundogan (13) and Kevin De Bruyne (15) have all top-scored for title-winning teams at the Etihad Stadium.

And there are certainly some similarities between Mikel Arteta's Arsenal and the pre-Haaland era of success at City, which is hardly surprising given the Spaniard served under Pep Guardiola for three years. The goals are certainly shared out in a similar way.

As well as Jesus (11), Bukayo Saka (14), Martin Odegaard and Gabriel Martinelli (both 15) all hit double-figures last season - one of the main reasons why the Gunners launched a surprised title tilt.

It's also highly likely that Jesus would have scored far more goals had he not been ruled out for four months with a knee injury sustained at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Arsenal were understandably distraught when it was confirmed that their £45 million ($55m) signing was facing a significant spell on the sidelines last December. Their fear was that the title challenge might fall apart without a player that Arteta recently claimed had "changed our world" following his arrival from City in the summer of 2022. His impact had undeniably been as transformative as it had been instantaneous, with Jesus scoring five times in his first eight Premier League outings, as well as registering three assists.

But it should not be forgotten that his enforced absence was not the disaster that many predicted. Would they have liked to have him available? Absolutely. But when he was injured, Arsenal were five points clear of City at the top of the table, and when he returned, that advantage was still intact.

His injury, then, didn't have anything like the same devastating effect on the Gunners' title challenge as that of William Saliba. Arsenal still had sufficient strength in attack to cope without Jesus, but they capitulated without their French centre-back.

As a result, there were calls during the summer for Arsenal to sign a proven goalscorer, with Paul Merson and Gary Neville among those to question whether the Gunners could really win the league with Jesus and Eddie Nketiah as their only options to lead the line.

"That's my only doubt," Neville said on his Stick to Football podcast. "If they had a Haaland, if they had a [Harry] Kane, I'd be saying it's Arsenal [who are the favourites] if they can keep Saliba, Gabriel and Declan Rice fit. But honestly, I worry about Nketiah and Jesus. They're erratic."

Jesus is definitely not clinical in front of goal, as the stats underline. He's scored just 12 goals in 32 appearances for Arsenal, and what's striking is his shot conversion rate, of 14.3 percent - which is not only well below Haaland (28.4%) but also strikers such as Callum Wilson (25%) and Ivan Toney (21.3%). His 'Big chance conversion' percentage (39.3%) is also significantly lower than the same players.

Of course, we've long known that Jesus isn't a lethal finisher. He's scored just once for Brazil in the past four years, while in six seasons at City, he only hit double figures in the league twice, in 2017-18 (13) and 2019-20 (14). He was also never afforded more than 21 starts, simply because he wasn't trusted to lead the line by Guardiola, who ended up playing him more as a winger.

Indeed, Jesus made it clear during his transfer talks with Arteta and Edu that he would only move to Arsenal if he were utilised as a centre-forward, having been left bitterly frustrated by his lack of opportunities at the Etihad.

He also admitted that the point of no return as far as he was concerned was when Guardiola elected to deploy Oleksandr Zinchenko as a 'false nine' in a Champions League clash with Paris Saint-Germain rather than pick him up front.

"Two hours before the game, there's a team talk, the team eats, rests for 30 minutes and goes to the game," Jesus told The Denilson Show. "He told us the team... I didn't even eat. I went straight to the room, crying. I called my mother to talk: 'I want to leave. I'm going home, because he put him [Zinchenko] on, and he didn't put me on. He put a left-back there.' I went crazy."

Jesus responded in the best possible fashion, coming off the bench to score one goal and create another as City came from behind to win 2-1, but his mind was made up.

Still, it's telling that Guardiola had no qualms about letting Jesus leave, and it's not as if he now regrets that decision, given Haaland is the goal machine that City were lacking, while Julian Alvarez has proven himself just as versatile and industrious as Jesus while carrying a greater goal threat.

But that doesn't mean Arsenal weren't righ to sign Jesus. As Merson has argued, the Brazilian could end up becoming the Gunners' Roberto Firmino, the ridiculously hard-working and intelligent No.9 that never truly scored freely at Liverpool but still made a massive contribution to their success under Jurgen Klopp.

"Is he going to be a guy that's going to score 25-30 goals? No," Arsenal legend Thierry Henry acknowledged on CBS Sports last year. "But what he does is contagious and then you have the likes of Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka, who can work wonders."

Arteta has also explained that Jesus, with his constant hassling and harrying of defenders, creates the kind of chaos up front that he adores. "He obviously draws a lot of attention from opponents with the way he plays and creates space for others," the manager told reporters earlier this season. "That's a big quality of his."

And he has plenty of others. He has, as he flagged himself, "the versatility to play in all three forward positions", and could well line up on the right flank in this weekend's massive Premier League meeting with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. In that sense, his value to Arteta and his team extends well beyond his strike-rate.

Jesus is not a great goalscorer. He never will be. His finishing really isn't "good enough". But that doesn't mean Jesus isn't good enough overall to play a key role in Arsenal achieving their ultimate goal: a first league title since 2004.