Arsenal’s carefully constructed attacking depth is being tested sooner than Mikel Arteta would have liked. Christos Tzolis, the club’s big summer addition on the wing, has returned from Greece duty with a hamstring injury. Kai Havertz is already sidelined with a hamstring issue of his own, picked up a week earlier on international duty with Germany. Suddenly the depth that looked so promising on paper is looking more like an injury crisis just as the Premier League resumes, and it hands the ball, almost literally, to Viktor Gyökeres.
Arsenal’s Injury Crisis Goes Beyond One Player
Tzolis lasted only 18 minutes for Greece against the Netherlands on October 1 in Thessaloniki. He’d already seen an early goal ruled out for offside before going down clutching his hamstring, initially refusing to come off before Greece boss Ivan Jovanović substituted him. Early reports point to a Grade 1 strain, the least severe category, with a expected 2-to-3-week absence that would likely rule him out of the next several fixtures. Havertz’s issue struck a week earlier in Germany’s Nations League opener against the Netherlands; he’s since returned to London for further evaluation, with Arsenal reportedly optimistic it isn’t long-term, though no firm return date has been set.
Elsewhere, Martin Ødegaard is managing an ankle knock from a late Bernardo Silva challenge while on Norway duty, and Declan Rice withdrew from the England squad entirely at the start of this window, though he’s expected back for Arsenal. With both Ødegaard and Rice representing midfield concerns on top of the attacking injuries, Arteta’s squad planning has gotten considerably more complicated heading into a stretch that includes Leeds, Lille and Nottingham Forest.
Gyökeres Is on Fire for Sweden and Goalless for Arsenal
Here’s the part that makes this genuinely strange: Viktor Gyökeres has not scored a single goal for Arsenal in the Premier League this season. In the same stretch, he’s been unstoppable for Sweden, becoming the first player in Nations League history to score in six consecutive matches in the competition, racking up 9 goals and 2 assists across that run and 24 international goals overall, just three short of cracking Sweden’s all-time top 10. “It’s a good record and I can continue to beat it,” he said after his latest, in a 1-1 draw with Bosnia and Herzegovina. A late equalizer in that game left him calling the result “sour,” hardly the words of a player lacking confidence or sharpness, just a player without the minutes or service to show it in an Arsenal shirt.
What It Means for Arsenal
With Tzolis and Havertz both sidelined, the path to regular starts for Gyökeres has never been clearer. He’s a different profile than Havertz, more of a true target man and pure goal threat, and Arteta will need to build the supporting cast around that rather than around Havertz’s more mobile, false-nine style. Leeds at home offers a gentle reintroduction, but the schedule tightens fast after that. For Gyökeres, this is about as clean an opportunity as a frustrated summer signing could ask for: he’s already proven for his country he hasn’t lost anything. Now he just needs Arsenal to see it too.
Arsenal’s Injury Crisis Could Finally End Gyökeres’ Goal Drought