Arsenal should have signed Atletico Madrid star Julian Alvarez over Viktor Gyokeres during summer striker search

Arsenal supporters had been crying out for a new No.9 since forever. When you grow up on a diet of Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp, how can you expect to be satisfied by helpings of Olivier Giroud and Alexandre Lacazette?

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's successful one-man mission to win the 2020 FA Cup was pretty much the last time Arsenal's striker was one of the most feared in the land. Gabriel Jesus did have a period where he looked like the second coming of Pele upon arrival in 2022, but he hasn't been the same since suffering a knee injury at that year's World Cup and is currently working his way back from an ACL tear.

When they needed a centre forward to carry the scoring load in the second half of 2023-24, Arsenal turned to Kai Havertz, who was very openly signed as a midfielder, though whose versatility was seen as a massive plus-point when paying Chelsea £65 million and immediately making him one of the club's highest earners. The Germany international has played well as a lone striker, though has rarely looked like one you could win the Premier League with.

Arsenal's over-reliance on Havertz and winger Bukayo Saka to provide goals and assists also led Arteta down the path of adding firepower to his squad. That was before you even factored in how stale their attack looked during an injury-blighted 2024-25 campaign.

Heading into the summer window, there were two prominent names on Arsenal's shortlist. One was RB Leipzig's Benjamin Sesko, and the other was Gyokeres of Sporting CP. The profile of striker Arteta craved for was a brutish and prolific hit-man who could occupy defenders with their physicality.

Despite a summer spend of roughly £250m ($335m), Arsenal seemingly had a limit on how much they were willing to shell out on a striker. It's one of the primary reasons why they pivoted away from Sesko, per The Athletic, despite the Slovenian being the preferred choice of the club's hierarchy prior to the window.

Sporting director Andrea Berta, who officially took post on March 30, balked at the demands of both Leipzig and Sesko's representatives, which effectively killed the hope of Arsenal agreeing a deal. Sporting, meanwhile, were still tough negotiators and an agreement over Gyokeres dragged on until late July over the structure of payment, but the price never really went back above £60m ($80.5m) all in once the Portuguese champions agreed to come down on their top scorer's £85m ($114m) release clause. The Sweden international, who scored 97 goals in 102 games for Sporting, became the priority target once Sesko was ruled out of the race for good, with Manchester United later stumping up an initial £66.3m plus £7.4m ($89m plus $9.9m) in add-ons to sign him from Leipzig.

While Sesko was still seen as a work in progress by Arsenal, the hope with Gyokeres was that he could hit the ground running as a ready-made striker capable of firing Arsenal to glory without too much of a settling in period, particularly as he had performed excellently in England with Championship side Coventry City from 2021 to 2023.

Through 11 games of his Arsenal career thus far, Gyokeres has scored three goals. Two came on the second week of the season in a 5-0 hammering of Leeds, while the other came directly after the September international window during a 3-0 triumph over Nottingham Forest at the start of Ange Postecoglou's infamous 39-day spell as manager.

Gyokeres heads into Tuesday's battle with Atletico on a run of nine games without a goal, but this isn't of public concern to Arteta. Prior to Gyokeres drawing a blank in Saturday's 1-0 victory at Fulham, the Arsenal boss said: "I told [Gyokeres] before the first meeting, I said, 'the nine that I want is a nine that when he doesn't score for six or eight games, he can handle that. If not, you have to go somewhere else because the expectation is going to be there'.

"So, if you put on a nine shirt for Arsenal, you have to be able to say, 'OK, six games, if I don't score, I'm a different player? I start to act in a different way?'. No, I want much more of the same of what he's doing."

Speaking after that win at Craven Cottage, Arteta said: "He was very close today again, two or three times. We were all begging for him to score. The work rate he puts in for the team is phenomenal, so we try to give him support and love and it will come.

"He looks at you and doesn't move. He was on the screen like this and he just said: 'It's fine'. That's him. There's no emotion there, he just has a single-targeted mindset. That's what I love about him."

That Arteta has even had to whip out these lines is proof enough that Gyokeres hasn't quite had the totally desired impact to date. Beyond the raw numbers, he also looked lost in Arsenal's 1-0 defeat at Liverpool and their last-gasp 1-1 draw at home to Manchester City. Even against lesser opposition, he's still getting up to speed with the ruthless rigour of the Premier League and appears a step or two behind his team-mates. This is a natural step he needs to take, but one Arsenal can only afford since they're already top of the table.

Though Gyokeres and Sesko were the two frontrunners for the Arsenal striker gig, Alvarez's name was one that appeared in many a gossip column when it came to the Emirates Stadium striking vacancy. He was prolific in his first season at Atletico, registering 29 goals and eight assists in 57 matches across all competitions, though was seldom cast as a happy figure at the Metropolitano.

Barcelona have long been linked with the Argentina international, while if Arsenal indeed held an interest, it would probably have been easier to try and get him out of Atletico rather than domestic rivals Manchester City. Alas, BBC Sport's Sami Mokbel reported that a move failed to materialise due to financials involved regardless, and Berta, the sporting director at Atleti when they first bought Alvarez for up to £81.8m in 2024, cooled the Gunners' interest.

Alvarez isn't the same physical profile as Gyokeres or Sesko, standing somewhere between 5'7" and 5'9" depending on which database you believe. The point is he's on the diminutive side and wouldn't have been able to harass defenders in the same way, instead relying on his off-ball pressing and on-ball excellence. Playing with this sort of centre-forward may have made Arsenal an easier watch this season, such is Alvarez's elegance and ability to bring others into play.

Atletico have stumbled away from La Liga title contention since Alvarez's arrival, though that's through little fault of his own and he's the one performer who can say they're pulling their weight to get the team back in that picture. It was Alvarez's hat-trick which proved the difference in September's 5-2 win over rivals Real Madrid which kick-started their season, while he has contributed seven goals and three assists in 10 games total.

For all the talk that Gyokeres was a win-now option, surely that applies more so to Alvarez, who has proven a capable lone striker in the Premier League and in attacking setups similar to this Arsenal one with City. Tuesday will be a test of how he does against man-mountain centre-backs like William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes at the peak of their powers rather than as up-and-comers, but even so, Gyokeres' struggles show there is more to being a striker than merely making defenders work for the ball back.

At 25, Alvarez has already played 340 senior games for club and country. He is as reliable a fitness bet as anyone in world sport, let alone only football. No wonder Pep Guardiola recently claimed he would love to have the forward back at the Etihad Stadium: "Julian had to compete with Erling (Haaland), which was something extraordinary for us. Julian Alvarez is top. That's why now he's at one of the best clubs in the world, Atleti, playing for a top-class manager, players, performing unbelievably. Maybe I'd love to have him... But I understand why he left."

Alvarez has all the pedigree of a World Cup winner while excelling at club level in both England and Spain. Even with a contract which runs until 2030, talk of a move away won't cool unless Atletico start competing for titles at home and on the continent again. You can't even rule out the possibility of Arsenal reigniting their tempered interest given Gyokeres' final price was far from prohibitive in the grand scheme of transfers - having multiple expensive strikers is, after all, back in fashion.

Since their defeat at Espanyol on the opening weekend of the new La Liga season, Atletico have lost only one of their subsequent 10 matches, which just so happened to be on their last visit to England, losing 3-2 to Liverpool at the last during September. On the whole, Simeone's men appear refreshed and ready to mix it with the big dogs at home and abroad again.

Arsenal and Atletico have only ever played twice before. They were drawn against one another for the 2017-18 Europa League semi-finals, and though the Gunners dominated the first leg at the Emirates, 10-man Atleti secured a precious 1-1 draw to take back home, where they prevailed 1-0 to advance and eventually clinch the trophy. It remains a painful memory for many of an Arsenal persuasion to this day, given this was Arsene Wenger's last chance to win silverware before he left the club that summer.

The Gunners can exact some long-overdue revenge over Simeone and Co. If anything, they're expected to do so given their own fine start to 2025-26. Just don't count out Alvarez from ripping up another script, though.