Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has indicated that Viktor Gyokeres will be allowed to make his debut for the club as soon as he is fully fit. The 27-year-old forward joined Arsenal in a deal reportedly worth up to \u00a363.8 million after protracted negotiations with Sporting CP. These talks were complicated by Sporting’s president allegedly reneging on a gentleman’s agreement to accept a reduced fee, which created tension in Gyokeres’ final weeks in Lisbon.<\/p>\n
Amid this dispute, Gyokeres refused to participate in first-team training, impacting his financial and physical condition. Arteta commented on the situation: “I think he hasn\u2019t had a single training session with the team since the last game with Sporting when they became champions. So we will assess him tomorrow, he\u2019s done all the medicals, everything is looking good but to get him up to speed with the right levels of fitness I think is very important. So we\u2019re not going to stop him, we want him with us as quick as possible but we\u2019ll have to assess and the medical team will do that.”<\/p>\n
Following Arsenal’s 3\u20132 victory against Newcastle United in Singapore, the team will face Tottenham Hotspur in the first-ever north London derby to be held outside England, scheduled in Hong Kong. Arsenal’s pre-season will conclude with two friendlies at the Emirates Stadium against Villarreal and Athletic Club before the Premier League campaign begins with a visit to Manchester United’s Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
Gyokeres previously excelled at Sporting under manager Ruben Amorim, the current Manchester United boss. Although Manchester United reportedly showed late interest in signing the striker, Gyokeres ultimately chose Arsenal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mikel Arteta confirms Viktor Gyokeres will debut for Arsenal once fully fit after complex transfer saga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[59,294,296],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-featured","tag-mikel-arteta","tag-viktor-gyokeres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","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=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}