Viktor Gy\u00f6keres received sharp criticism from Swedish media after a subdued outing in Sweden\u2019s 2\u20130 defeat to Kosovo in Pristina. The Arsenal forward had begun his international campaign by teeing up Sweden\u2019s second goal in a 2\u20132 draw with Slovenia, but he struggled to influence the contest in Kosovo.<\/p>\n
Statistics from the match underline the frustration: Gy\u00f6keres took 44 touches, 12 of them inside Kosovo\u2019s penalty area, yet managed to force Arijanet Muric into only one save across his 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Expressen were particularly severe in their assessment. \u201cIt is noticeable that he is not in his best shape, the touch is not quite there and Gy\u00f6keres often lost the ball,\u201d wrote Therese Str\u00f6mberg and Linus Petersson. \u201cHe did dig up a couple of half-chances in the first half, but it is not enough. This was too bad a performance by the attacking star.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fotbollskanalen offered a milder read, judging him \u201cacceptable\u201d in the first half but calling him \u201cinvisible\u201d after the interval.<\/p>\n
Observers have contrasted the current impression with Gy\u00f6keres\u2019s reputation at Sporting CP, where his physique was a regular talking point. His former manager Ruben Amorim liked to joke that he had a body \u201cfrom God,\u201d yet there has been a repeated sense of sluggishness in his earliest appearances at Arsenal.<\/p>\n
That slow start can be traced in part to timing around the transfer. Much like Isak, Gy\u00f6keres snubbed Sporting\u2019s pre-season training to secure his Premier League switch, only joining up midway through Arsenal\u2019s tour of Asia.<\/p>\n
After a disjointed Premier League debut against Manchester United, Mikel Arteta acknowledged the need to work on the striker\u2019s adaptation. \u201cYou can tell especially in our high press and rhythm that we demand, that especially in the first half we were giving a bit too much time. It is something that we have to work on him, especially there.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, the scrutiny from Sweden focuses on conditioning and timing as Gy\u00f6keres seeks to translate his club potential into consistent international performances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Swedish media criticised Gy\u00f6keres after a subdued display in Kosovo; fitness and timing questioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,961],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-2604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-international","tag-alexander-isak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}