At £45 million, Gabriel Jesus does not come cheap. The Brazilian is part of the squad which won four of the last five Premier League titles, and has played at least 40 games for Manchester City in each of the last five seasons. There’s no doubting his ability as a player, but doubts remain about whether Jesus can step up and be the main man in an attack.
He was brought to Manchester with the hope that City were buying a potential superstar. He perhaps hasn’t lived up to those expectations, but he’s certainly been a reliable performer since arriving at the club. Versatile and hark-working, Arsenal will have a good idea of what kind of player they’re picking up after Mikel Arteta’s stint as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at the Manchester club.
One of Arteta’s roles in training was to work with the club’s attackers, focusing on their movement and positioning to ensure they were able to effectively carry out Guardiola’s tactics. His work has been heralded by the likes of Leroy Sané and Raheem Sterling for making them more effective attackers. The Spanish coach is known to go into great detail on the training pitch, informing players on how they should angle their bodies when receiving the ball.
Jesus was unable to cement the first-choice centre forward position in Manchester, with Sergio Agüero too good for the Brazilian to dislodge. As such, he found himself often playing in wider positions, coached on how to operate out wide by Arteta. While he’s found himself to be part of a rotating cast of attackers under Guardiola, the hope is that a move to Arsenal will see him become the tip of the spear in the attack. It would certainly boost Arsenal in the latest Premier League odds if Arteta can make Jesus a centre forward once again.
The centre of the attack is an area where Arsenal are desperate to improve. Last season, it was obviously the one area where Arsenal were lacking quality. Eddie Nketiah is a fine squad player, but doubts remain about whether he has the all-round game to spearhead a Champions League level attack in the future. Alexandre Lacazette was simply not the player that he was five years ago, and it showed. The Frenchman was comfortable dropping into deeper areas, but he had fallen off physically, and lacked the sharpness in the area that characterised his earlier career.
As such, it’s clear why Jesus has been signed. Commenting on the Brazilian’s arrival, he said: “I think the club has done a tremendous job to recruit a player of this stature. It’s somebody that I know personally really well, and we all know really well because he’s played in the league and been really successful.”
Arteta has already shown a knack for improving individual attackers, both during his time under Guardiola, and as evidenced by the rapid development of Arsenal’s young team. The likes of Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli have all improved under him, and with Gabriel Jesus now approaching the prime of his career, Arteta will be looking forward to picking up where he left off with the Brazilian. After Arteta worked with Jesus to convert him from a wide forward to a central attacker, the time has come to reverse that process.