Summer Transfers 2025 Missed Opportunities and Regrets

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Originally Posted by 21_GOONER_SALUTE

I'm pretty sure 1 in 2 games is still greater than 0 in 6 games. I'll probably need to check for assists to help Sesko out :good:

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It’s funny given I never mentioned Sesko, he’s my preference over Gyokeres and I think he has the potential to be a top player

But my position is far more strongly Anti Gyokeres than it is pro Sesko.

Then again in some ways I’d prefer no striker to Gyokeres. My reasoning for which is I think Arteta won’t win us the title, and I think I’d rather the next guy in 2026 not be lumbered with what to do with a 28 year old who only had a slightly better than average record in the championship (which if you hadn’t noticed given that we’ve had all three clubs go straight back down in consecutive seasons , an occurrence almost unprecedented in English football suggests a big gulf in quality between the championship and the premier league).

If Sesko doesn’t make the grade better chance of a higher re-sale because of his age.

Your dismissal of Gyokeres' record in Portugal (and the CL) is silly

He clearly has Ian Wright levels of single-mindedness when it comes to scoring goals and in a team where he will have a better class of player around him to supply chances it's illogical to suggest he couldn't do well

If he even got half the goals next season that he got last season he'd be classified as a success, whereas Sesko would have to be at least as prolific as before, in what again was an 'inferior' league, to justify the buy

And who cares about re-sales, we need to win and win now before the other good players we have start to give up on the project and go elsewhere or pass their peak

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Originally Posted by Mac76

Your dismissal of Gyokeres' record in Portugal (and the CL) is silly

He clearly has Ian Wright levels of single-mindedness when it comes to scoring goals and in a team where he will have a better class of player around him to supply chances it's illogical to suggest he couldn't do well

If he even got half the goals next season that he got last season he'd be classified as a success, whereas Sesko would have to be at least as prolific as before, in what again was an 'inferior' league, to justify the buy

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I’ve seen you make that argument a lot “if he even scores half the goals” as if somehow that’s guaranteed

He’s a player that thrives on transition play, and largely has a record of scoring against feeble defences. His record in the champions league is nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that suggests that he’s destined to be successful in the premier league.

Your insistence that we need to win and win now for me makes it even more puzzling that you’d encourage such a high risk investment. A player who at 27 has not played a single international tournament and has only played in top flight football in Sweden and Portugal, that tells me that top clubs (which Sporting Lisbon doesn’t count as) do not regard him in the way people on here inexplicably do.

It’s not even just Gyökeres, go back twenty years and Bolton must have thought they got the deal of the century when they signed Mario Jardel who scored 182 goals in 174 league games for Porto and Sporting combined, player made 7 league appearances and Allardyce called him the worst player he ever signed.


There’s a non exhaustive list of players who have torn up the ground in Portugal and bombed everywhere else. Yet I’m expected to believe Gyokeres will be the exception based on an ok champions league record and a fairly decent goal scoring record in the championship

I don’t think it’s me being silly here

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Originally Posted by Mac76

And who cares about re-sales, we need to win and win now before the other good players we have start to give up on the project and go elsewhere or pass their peak

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I agree and even if we did have re-sale we'll bundle players out on the cheap anyway.

Can't really fathom the level of antipathy towards Gyokeres from HCZ tbh but it'll be interesting to see how it falls.

I've no doubt in my mind Gyokeres is the one Berta would want - he would absolutely sign him if he was still at Atleti.

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Originally Posted by Mac76

And who cares about re-sales, we need to win and win now before the other good players we have start to give up on the project and go elsewhere or pass their peak

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If we lose players next season that we don’t want to sell, we will make a lot of money for them and we won’t have Arteta in charge of how we replace them. I don’t think we can win the title with him in charge and I’d rather not be lumbered with players that could be harder to sell.

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Originally Posted by McNamara That Ghost...

I agree and even if we did have re-sale we'll bundle players out on the cheap anyway.

Can't really fathom the level of antipathy towards Gyokeres from HCZ tbh but it'll be interesting to see how it falls.

I've no doubt in my mind Gyokeres is the one Berta would want - he would absolutely sign him if he was still at Atleti.

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I don’t get what’s not to understand. He’s 27, he’s not played in a top European league and his goalscoring stats are actually not as good as Mario Jardel (who also had an excellent scoring record in the champions league for Galatasaray) who turned out to be a complete waste of skin.

I think because of that he’s an incredibly high risk investment. You don’t have to agree, but not being able to understand is not really my problem


Berta signed Joao Felix for over 100 million, fair to say his judgement is not beyond reproach

Indeed, nobody's judgement is beyond reproach.

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Originally Posted by McNamara That Ghost...

Indeed, nobody's judgement is beyond reproach.

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No and I accept that I could be wrong about Gyokeres. But I’d rather not roll the dice and find out

If by his age, he’d played in the Bundesliga or even Serie A and scored even half of what he did in Portugal I’d be receptive to signing him despite his age.

I have severe doubts he would work that well in our system and like it or not that system isn’t going to change whilst Arteta is here so that creates even more reason to be skeptical

I mention Joao Felix because I genuinely worry that’s who we could end up with

Though Gyokores has played a smaller sample of games in the CL, his games to goal ratio is already at 0.75, which exceeds Kane on the chart (8 games, 6 goals).

If he joins us (or stays at Sporting), and gets another 3 seasons of group stage CL football (24 games), he's likely to get into this all time list, especially if he keeps on scoring penalties :lol: ( though seriously, it would have been nice to have this skillset in our "arsenal" against Madrid)

As for the other guy who's played 28 CL games and scored 6 goals, the road looks much tougher especially with Leipzig not being in the CL not to mention the rate with which he is Freddy Krugering these keepers.

My guess is he'll be lucky if he can score 25 CL goals before he gets to 30. (Haaland scored 23 CL goals even before he got to Citeh in only 19 games at his age)

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