a \u00a363.5m deal was in the final stages,<\/a> with the move only held up because of negotiations between the clubs over add-on payments.<\/p>\nThe 27-year-old has been given permission to travel in order to complete his medical and is expected to sign a five-year contract and officially become an Arsenal player in the next couple of days.<\/p>\n
The Arsenal squad is in Singapore on the first leg of their pre-season tour of Asia.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Friday, Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta said he “cannot talk about a player who is not ours yet”, but suggested any new signing would join the tour as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
“For sure. Obviously once we have finalised everything with a player we want to integrate him with the team as quickly as possible,” Arteta said.<\/p>\n
“With Noni it was impossible because he needed some time [after playing in the Club World Cup]. I think he’s going to take a shorter vacation than he deserves because he wants to joins us straight away, as soon as we’re back.<\/p>\n
“I think immediately is better so they can start to join the team, get to know each other and get the ideas we want to put in their minds.”<\/p>\n
Gyokeres has been in demand during the summer transfer window after scoring 54 goals in 52 games for Sporting last season.<\/p>\n
BBC Sport revealed earlier this month that Arsenal had turned their attention to him after hitting an impasse in their bid to sign Benjamin Sesko from RB Leipzig.<\/p>\n
The search for a striker has been a drawn-out process for manager Mikel Arteta, who has been desperate to add an elite centre-forward after his side scored 17 fewer goals than Liverpool as they finished 10 points behind the Premier League champions.<\/p>\n
The Spanish boss increased his overall attacking options with the signing of England winger Noni Madueke, 23, from Chelsea last week.<\/p>\n
Former Brighton and Coventry striker Gyokeres scored 97 goals in 102 matches during his two seasons in Portugal and helped Sporting lift back-to-back Primeira Liga titles.<\/p>\n
During his time at Coventry, he was one of the most prolific strikers in the Championship.<\/p>\n
He scored 43 goals in 116 appearances for the Sky Blues and was named in the Championship team of the year in 2022-23 as they reached the play-off final. That summer he signed for Sporting for about \u00a320m.<\/p>\n
He made his Sweden debut in 2019 against Finland and has 26 caps, scoring 15 goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sweden striker Viktor Gyokeres is expected to complete a move to Arsenal from Sporting this weekend. BBC Sport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-21155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}