F365 knee-jerk: Arsenal have signed a pub striker in Viktor Gyokeres

Ruben Amorim denied us the ‘battle of the new No.9s’ we were after from the off at Old Trafford, with Benjamin Sesko’s introduction after 65 minutes meaning he and Viktor Gyokeres were never on the pitch at the same time.

And yet, we still got we wanted: the opportunity for a knee-jerk reaction. Gyokeres was – and therefore is – rubbish.

He was hooked on the hour mark and deservedly so having bumbled around the pitch with the grace and skill of a pub player. His best moment of the game was a shoulder barge on Matthijs de Ligt which sent the Manchester United centre-back flying and was reposted roughly a billion times by Arsenal fans desperate for some sign of worth from their £55m ‘final piece’.

READ MORE: We’re begging you, Manchester United and Arsenal, show us something better than this

Apart from that his first Arsenal outing consisted of quite a lot of running about, dodgy touches and a complete lack of goal threat. We particularly enjoyed that bit when he trod on the ball.

He had no shots, completed no dribbles, made 11 passes, attempted no tackles and won one aerial duel before being replaced by Kai Havertz, who will be starting ahead of him before long if there isn’t a massive improvement. By Christmas at the latest, as one particularly astute F365er predicted.

Arsenal spent most of the summer deciding between Sesko and Gyokeres and although Manchester United’s shiny new striker touched the ball just seven times in his 30-odd minutes, there were good signs from the guy Andrea Berta opted against.

He had two half-chances, both fairly weak headers, but at least he was in position. And there were several moments in the first half as Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha broke on Arsenal when it looked as though they were a £74m striker short of getting back into the game.

Arsenal fans will blame the service to Gyokeres at Old Trafford – and they’re right to – but there’s also a sense that this was the sort of game, in which Mikel Arteta’s side weren’t particularly dominant, when there was space in behind the United defence, in which Gyokeres could have made a real difference with his famous barrelling runs, with or without the ball.

Sure, he didn’t have much of a pre-season, the link between him and the midfield will take time and none of his fellow Arsenal forwards were anywhere near their best – Gabriel Martinelli completed five passes in his 60 minutes, FFS – but Gunners fans hoping for their Erling Haaland instead got a below-par Salomon Rondon.

This was the first game since Gyokeres left Coventry that he hasn’t managed a shot on goal and on his Premier League debut at Old Trafford he looked far more like the guy who scored seven fewer Championship goals than Chuba Akpom in his last season in English football than the guy who’s got 97 in 102 games for Sporting since.

After just half an hour, you can see how Sesko fits at Manchester United, in stark contrast to Gyokeres and Arsenal, for whom it is perhaps the unsuitability that’s as big a worry as anything.

Gyokeres makes runs into the channel and Arsenal don’t play those passes. It’s a learning curve for him and his teammates, obviously, but that’s a difficult bond to forge during the season when Gyokeres’ qualities are so vastly different to those of Havertz or any of the other strikers who have led their line under Arteta.

We can’t see it. One game and done for Gyokeres. Next.