The result sees the North Londoners move up to fourth in the European competition\u2019s League Phase table, having won all three matches thus far.<\/p>\n
One member of Arteta\u2019s<\/a> squad has been praised for his contribution to the victory over the Spanish outfit, but Deeney believes this praise has gone overboard.<\/p>\n Arsenal signed Gyokeres for \u00a363 million<\/a> in the summer.<\/p>\n The Swede has struggled in certain games for the Gunners and was in desperate need of a goal prior to the Atletico clash.<\/p>\n Having netted just three times in eleven appearances in a red and white shirt, the pressure was starting to grow on him to deliver.<\/p>\n Fortunately for Arteta and Arsenal<\/a>, he did. Gyokeres scored twice<\/a> against the La Liga giants, bundling the ball over the line on both occasions to cement the Gunners\u2019 lead.<\/p>\n The 27-year-old has garnered plaudits for his performance, but Deeney doesn\u2019t echo these sentiments. The former Watford striker insists that the narratives around the player shouldn\u2019t change after these goals.<\/p>\n \u201cThose goals come when they were two up first and foremost,\u201d Deeney said on talkSPORT. <\/p>\n \u201cSo Atletico obviously have to go for it. More space opens up, obviously they score. Again, it\u2019s really contradictory what I\u2019m going to say, but it\u2019s not, as a striker, any goal counts. Who cares? They\u2019re not clinical finishes. They\u2019re not ones where you go, \u2018Oh my god, what a finisher.\u2019 They scuff one in and one hit him. Fair enough. You come away with two.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re now four days removed from Saturday, when the inquest was, is he playing well, when I\u2019m happy to defend that he\u2019s actually playing well because he scored three in 10. <\/p>\n \u201cSo now he scuffs one in, and one hits him, and now he\u2019s an elite striker again. It\u2019s like, what are we doing? He\u2019s not in the Haaland bracket. He\u2019s not in the Harry Kane bracket. Like we\u2019re not talking about a top, top-level striker.\u201d<\/p>\n No one expects Viktor Gyokeres to be Harry Kane or Erling Haaland<\/p>\n While Deeney was likely deliberately using hyperbole to get his point across, his sentiment was very wide of the mark.<\/p>\n Arsenal didn\u2019t sign Gyokeres for a fee that would suggest they expect him to be at the level of Erling Haaland or Harry Kane.<\/p>\n In 2025, \u00a363 million for a striker is a relatively modest fee, and suggests that the Gunners merely wanted to add another useful attacking player to their cohort of forwards.<\/p>\n Nobody expects Gyokeres to be \u2018elite\u2019 and nobody is suggesting that he is because he scored twice against Atletico. Arsenal are merely happy that he found the back of the net for them in a big game.<\/p>\n He deserves credit for ending his drought and performing well, it\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Troy Deeney is confused by some of the revisionism around one Arsenal player since the Gunners\u2019 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82,42803,15145],"class_list":{"0":"post-239791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-troy-deeney","13":"tag-viktor-gyokeres"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Arsenal](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2242446853-1024x678.jpg\")
Photo by Alex Pantling\/Getty ImagesTroy Deeney says Viktor Gyokeres isn\u2019t \u2018elite\u2019<\/p>\n