The 27-year-old joined The Gunners in a £63M move and was handed a start in Arsenal’s Premier League opener at Old Trafford by manager Mikel Arteta who threw him in at the deep end to see how he would perform in one of the biggest games of the season.
Gyokeres needs time
The former Brighton and Coventry City forward struggled to make an impact however and was substituted after 60 minutes after failing to land a shot on target during the contest. Ferdinand gave his reaction to Gyokeres’ full Arsenal debut on his YouTube channel and was surprisingly lenient to the forward who rejected United earlier this summer.
“I’ve seen some of the comments, people saying Gyokeres doesn’t look the part – early in the season, give him five or six games minimum, just to get up to speed.
“Give him time to get up to speed fitness-wise, he’s got to get fit! He probably hasn’t trained with a team since he got to Arsenal because he demanded to leave – bit like Isak now, he won’t be training with the team, he’ll be on his own (at Newcastle).
“The depth now, Havertz coming on, Arsenal have a real opportunity now.”
There were instances in which Martin Odegaard tried to play Gyokeres in directly but the move did not come off. Ferdinand may be right that the Portuguese international needs time to adapt to the side and their tactics if fans are to see the best out of him.
Arteta agrees with Ferdinand
Arsenal manager Arteta remained relatively unfazed by his new signing's performance and admitted that he does need time to fit into the club’s system, much like Ferdinand said.
"Well, he did a lot of things very good.
"You can tell, especially in our high-pressing rhythm that we demand that, especially in the first hour. Again, he took too much time. It's something that we have to work on him, especially there.
"And then, yeah, finalising situation, he didn't have that many chances to do that because, as I said, on the previous action, before we had to play that last ball that the line was standing still with 40 metres behind, we then managed to put the ball through to exploit his quality. But overall, I mean, coming away to Manchester United, winning your first game with Arsenal, it's a good start."