Arsenal’s 2024/25 season was a tale of what might have been. They finished second to Liverpool in the Premier League race, and were beaten in the Champions League semifinals by eventual champions PSG.
While the Gunners look up for the fight next season as well, there are clear holes in the squad to fill. One of those is at center-forward where injuries and lack of depth forced them to deploy midfielder Mikel Merino up front for a chunk of the second half of the campaign.
Arsenal now look poised to make a splash for one of Europe’s biggest transfer targets up front — but there’s more than one option to choose from. The Gunners are being linked to two exceptional players, Viktor Gyokeres of Sporting CP and Benjamin Sesko of RB Leipzig.
While both are exceedingly talented and have a litany of goals in their locker, they also provide significantly different attributes, thus leaving Arsenal with a decision to make. Signing talented players isn’t all that a club must do to improve their fortunes — they must also identify the right fit for their tactical style.
The Sporting News breaks down how each player would fit at Arsenal, and which choice would be the right one for the Gunners.
📲 Follow The Sporting News on WhatsApp
‘Mikel Arteta is a big admirer of Sesko, but RB Leipzig would want over £60m for him’ 💭
The Daily Mirror are reporting that Arsenal are in active pursuit of deals for both Viktor Gyokeres and Benjamin Sesko 🗞️ pic.twitter.com/0lELsruh5d
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) June 16, 2025
Should Arsenal sign Benjamin Sesko? How would he fit?
Having just turned 22 years old, Slovenia international Sesko has developed through the Red Bull system, first at RB Salzburg in Austria and then at RB Leipzig in Germany. He scored 13 goals and assisted five more last season in the Bundesliga through 33 appearances, plus another four goals in eight Champions League games, all in the league phase.
Those numbers certainly don’t jump off the page, especially when compared to Gyokeres, but there’s a reason for that — he’s often played in a free-flowing role alongside fellow striker Lois Openda, who was signed in the same summer of 2023. Both players have the freedom to drift out wide or back into midfield to receive the ball, and they combined for the goal totals of one superstar striker (Sesko with 27 in the past two seasons, Openda with 33).
To identify whether Arsenal should sign Sesko, it’s first necessary to break down what kind of player he is, and who Arsenal would be signing.
2 – FC Bayern Munich conceded only their second goal in the first 15 minutes of this Bundesliga season – both scored by RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko (in the 2nd minute in the first match). Flashko. pic.twitter.com/IFEdqFccV8
— OptaFranz (@OptaFranz) May 3, 2025
Sesko does not have the raw numbers that Gyokeres put up at Sporting this past season, but he does offer a number of positive traits. Sesko is proficient on the ball, with a high take-on rate, indicating he can create chances for himself when receiving in dangerous areas.
He is also a plus finisher, scoring 27 league goals over his past two seasons with RB Leipzig on just 19.44 expected goals (xG), a +7.56 rate according to UnderStat.com. While that should be taken with a grain of salt as Bundesliga finishing is often above average compared to the rest of Europe, it’s still an impressive and consistent number over the course of a long period of time.
Finally, Sesko is exceptional in the air. Towering above defenders at 6ft 5in, Sesko is a dominant aerial presence. His 57% aerial win rate ranks in the 97th percentile amongst European strikers, who are often up against center-backs that excel in such positions. Yet despite this size and presence in the air, he also possesses exceptional speed, a fascinating and rare combination.
However, there are holes in Sesko’s game. He is not a high-accuracy passer, even for a striker, and he struggles to create chances for teammates. He ranks in the 30th percentile among forwards in shot-creating actions, a statistic that includes shots. This says there are a lot of empty touches for Sesko, especially considering he ranks in the 70th percentile in touches but just the 12th percentile in touches in the penalty area.
There would be a lot for Sesko to learn in transitioning to the Premier League as well. While he fits the profile from an athletic standpoint, he will be forced to adjust his game to a league with much less space to work with. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem — Sesko is already excellent at winning fouls — but there will be an adjustment.
The final thing to mention is how Sesko has been used at RB Leipzig suggests a lack of nuanced approach. Paired with Openda up top, the two strikers both had a ton of freedom to move all over the pitch and receive the ball. Their heatmaps suggest a complete lack of specific instruction — below is Sesko’s heatmap from the 2024/25 Bundesliga season via SofaScore, which looks strikingly similar to that of Openda.
SofaScore.com
So what does this mean? It could suggest that Sesko has a range of capabilities that the RB Leipzig staff let loose. It also may mean his best skill set has yet to be identified, and if Arteta can hone in on one or two exceptional talents, he could thrive in a more rigid structure and tactical role. However, it’s also possible that Sesko’s development has been stunted, and that he hasn’t been given any more narrowly-defined role because there’s nothing the RB Leipzig staff believes he truly excels at.
Time will tell which is a more accurate description of his skill set.
Should Arsenal sign Viktor Gyokeres? How he would fit
Goal-hawk Gyokeres lit up Europe last season, scoring an utterly outrageous 54 goals across 52 matches in all competitions. The 27-year-old Sweden international bagged 39 league goals in Portugal, plus eight assists as well, and netted six goals in eight Champions League games, all in the league phase.
Add in that Gyokeres is also lighting up the net at international level — he scored nine goals in six Nations League games for Sweden across last season — and there’s clearly merit to his record.
From a statistical standpoint, Gyokeres leaps off the page, much more than Sesko does. Not only is his goalscoring record utterly outrageous, but he provides so much to a team’s attack. He ranks in the 99th percentile for European strikers in shot-creating actions, touches in the attacking penalty area, progressive carrying distance, and progressive passes received. In particular, he’s exceptional at creating shooting moments from take-ons and challenging opponents on the dribble in dangerous areas.
Also, Gyokeres is excellent in dead-ball situations. He scored 19 of his 54 goals for Sporting this season from the penalty spot, without a single miss, and he’s also excellent from free-kicks. This Arsenal side lacks a truly elite penalty taker.
At the end of the day, analysing his benefits to an attack are simple — you just plop Gyokeres at the top of your attack, feed him the ball and goals will follow.
However, there are also clear criticisms of a potential signing. First, he’s 27 years old, compared to the youth of Sesko. While this could fit Arsenal’s situation, knowing their window of opportunity may be closing soon and the team is in a win-now mode, it’s also quite notable.
Second, while his penalty record is valuable as mentioned above, it’s also a notable concern. The 19 penalties (20 if you include international goals) last season do significantly inflate his overall goal tally. Two of his three goals against Manchester City in the Champions League came from the spot, while 12 of his 39 league goals — nearly a third! — came via penalties.
Which striker should Arsenal sign?
While both Sesko and Gyokeres are clearly capable strikers who could improve the Arsenal attack, it’s unlikely — nay, unwise — for the Gunners to consider signing both.
So who to pick? Largely, it comes down to style and expenditure preference.
A lot will depend on whether Arsenal wish to sign a younger player with higher upside but also higher risk, or a player in his prime who will likely contribute more in the immediate future but also have his longevity with the club capped.
Both strikers present at least some amount of risk. They each come from a league where the average level of opposition leads to doubt about their translatable skill set, and they both may need some time to adapt. For Gyokeres, Arsenal could be spooked by the relative failure of Darwin Nunez to adapt to the Premier League after scoring loads in Portugal with Benfica, while Bundesliga performance has also not exactly been a highly reliable sign of success in the Premier League.
Sesko does not come with an eye-popping statistical skill set, although some of that could be down to RB Leipzig’s roster makeup and style of play. Consequently, much of Gyokeres’s production came from the penalty spot, which can beg questions about his actual level from open play.
At the end of the day, there’s no obvious answer to this question. While Sesko likely has the greater value to the club long-term, there’s real benefit to bringing in a player of Gyokeres’s quality for a club that is tired of building for the future and wants to win now.
Yet there’s also no guarantee the Swede is a slam dunk from the first moment he hits the Emirates Stadium pitch, and Mikel Arteta may instead prefer Sesko’s physical talents and versatility.
The decision makers at the London club are the ones with the most information, and their call will likely be the most informed, deciding which player’s personality they feel best translates, and which player will tactically vibe with Arteta’s approach next season.
