In the Premier League, patience waits for no No.9

It was a tale of two strikers this weekend as Arsenal met Manchester United at Old Trafford.

One of the big storylines of the summer has been the falling of very large no.9 shaped dominoes as teams across the Premier League looked to acquire the increasingly trendy number nine enforcer, whether they were replacing previous failures or hoping to add something they’d been missing until now.

For Liverpool, they had clearly seen enough of Darwin Nunez, and despite his immense popularity was moved off to Saudi Arabia. In his stead, for now, is Frenchman Hugo Ekitike, who has impressed in his two games to date with well taken goals in the Community Shield and in the league opener against Bournemouth.

Buying from a position of strength and with the Alexander Isak saga yet to be settled, Ekitike has fluttered in relatively under the radar, despite his lofty fee, with not a whole pile of pressure on him to deliver immediately. In lieu of Nunez, he’s already shown touches of deft quality and in a short space of time has eased any worries fans might have had, even so much as raising a debate as to why the club even need Isak.

But for Manchester United and Arsenal, their chosen centrepieces have fallen into entirely different circumstances. With both clubs heavily linked with giant-footed Slovenian Benjamin Šeško and Liga Portugal bully Viktor Gyökeres heading into the summer transfer window, the result was inevitably going to be a tale of two strikers and which team ended up on the right side of the deal when all the chips had been played.

In the end, Arsenal went all in for the more experienced Gyökeres. With a devastating strike rate in Portugal with Sporting CP after dominating in the Championship with Coventry City, Gyökeres caught the eye with his brutish physique and eye for goal, over 50 of them in all competitions last season.

Meanwhile, United, beating Newcastle to the punch, ended up with the slightly more undercooked but equally impressive 6’5” behemoth Šeško from RB Leipzig.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long for round one between the two heavyweights with Sunday’s fixture at Old Trafford. In the end, it proved more to be a minor sparring session with Šeško, having only arrived at Carrington, eased in via the bench, while Gyökeres got 60 entirely underwhelming minutes.

Coming out of the 1-0 win for Arsenal, in an otherwise abject performance for the Gunners, the negativity is somehow hovering more over London than Manchester. The Swede has seen his performance given the sarcastic Twitter montage treatment, while his stats - 0 goals, 0 chances created, 4 completed passes - became prime fodder for social media content regurgitators.

On the other side of the ring, Šeško escaped relatively unscathed from the baying mob, but the leash is short on him too. Replacing Rasmus Hojlund who has been unceremoniously cast aside after United saw fit to spend over £60million on him two summers ago, Šeško must simply be a success this time around. With his fellow newbies Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha showing flashes of quality on Sunday, seeing the trio start together will be an exciting prospect for fans.

But in terms of patience for newly acquired frontmen, there isn’t a more cruel mistress than Premier League football. There’s compelling evidence building up that if strikers don’t hit the ground running immediately or are mired in an extended goal drought, it extremely hard to pull themselves out of the trench and the flop radar is flickering dangerously towards red.

In which case, for our aforementioned heroes, you’d want to be very thin-skinned and steering well clear of social media until that hurdle is jumped and they’re safely the other side of abject social media cruelty, media criticism and the butt of rival fan jokes and crass AI imagery.

It’s only week one but, truly, this is no place for patience in this arena. It’s deliver now or be cast into the cement mixer. The reality is of course there’s little reason to be so hasty and if football didn’t live in such heated weekend vacuums, more players might have a chance at success after high profile transfers. But in the cacophony of Premier League football and donning jerseys heavier than lead, Gyökeres must be Arsenal’s answer up front and carry Mikel Arteta, sword in one hand, to a Premier League title.

All 6’5” of Šeško must slay his measly predecessor and show, steely-abbed, who is the new big dog in a town, willing and able to lift United beyond meme-club catergorisation and the week-to-week slum of jokes and ridicule.

Because in the deafening hum of top flight English football, there is no other option for two strikers in their first week in the league than to be outright successes. Anything less is a failure.

If all this sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. Gyökeres may have looked poor on Sunday, but so did Arsenal as a whole — yet they left Old Trafford with three points on the opening weekend. Delivering a conclusion either way on either striker is quite frankly stupid and dumb.

Let’s leave the baying mob at it because there’s plenty of football to be played and plenty of chances for our protagonists to quell the mighty expectations that are unfairly put on them. Let’s revisit at the end of January, when these two meet for round two and there’s substantially more evidence on our scorecard.

Until then, maybe have a little patience for the toiling Premier League no.9?