Gabriel Jesus will wear the No.9 shirt for Arsenal as the club look set to announce his signing from Manchester City.
The Gunners are on the verge of announcing the signing of the Brazil international in a landmark £45million deal which will give a major boost to their attacking options. Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have both left the club this year, with Eddie Nketiah as the only recognised striker remaining in Mikel Arteta’s squad.
The nine shirt was last worn by Lacazette, who recently left the club for Lyon following the expiration of his contract at the end of last season. The squad number is already a favourite of Jesus', given it was the number he donned during his five-year stay at the Etihad, with Edu playing a big role in his switch to the Emirates.
Jesus netted 95 goals across his time in Manchester, where he helped the club win four Premier League titles, and has now been pictured at the Emirates being paraded by his new club - with the number nine shirt that has been empty since the exit of Lacazette, with Nketiah inheriting Aubameyang's old 14 shirt..
It has not always been a shirt that has brought the best out of Arsenal players, though it has been worn by some incredibly gifted forwards. For every Park-chu Young or Francis Jeffers, there has been a Jose Antonio Reyes or Nicolas Anelka - Jesus will do well to ensure he is remembered as fondly as the latter group.
Jesus will be the fourth arrival of the summer transfer window at Arsenal following the arrivals of Fabio Vieira from Porto, New England goalkeeper Matt Turner and Brazilian winger Marquinhos from Sao Paulo.
Have Your Say! How many goals will Jesus score for Arsenal in his debut season? Tell us what you think here.
Mirror Football columnist Stan Collymore has said of the transfer : “Gabriel Jesus is a very good signing for Arsenal. But what we now need to see is Mikel Arteta starting to demand more from people in their different roles. Jesus will score goals but, if you allow him to, he will play where he wants to play.
“He will pop up on the left, on the right, in the box if he is allowed to and unless his manager can make him disciplined then he isn’t going to score you 25 goals, it will be more like eight or nine. What Arteta needs to say to him is, ‘Hold it up, lay it off, come alive in and around the box and, via Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe, we will get you the ammunition to get in there and be reliable in front of goal. My concern, even at City where you have Pep Guardiola moving you like a chess piece on the training ground day in, day out, was that Jesus wasn’t disciplined. That was the reason he wasn’t first pick as central striker, which he was bought to be.
“Sergio Aguero was meant to be on his way but he stayed because he got in the box and got on the end of things. Like I said about Raphinha when I was talking about his next move last week, if you can get someone who will repeatedly tell a player, ‘Do this and do it 10 times a game and you will be super effective’, and you can get him to do it, you have a massive weapon on your hands. But if you have someone and say to him, ‘Just go and do what you want’, you will still get some goals but he won’t be as ruthless.
“So it’s simple, we will find out about Arteta now. There’s no Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with his lifestyle to blame, no Alex Lacazette he can blame for being mopey and moody. He has a player who scored a lot of goals in the last few games of last season and has a goals-to-games ratio that is very good. And if he disciplines him and makes him an in-box striker, Arsenal will get a 25-goal-a-season guy and then you are talking about planting two feet in the Champions League positions.
“But if you let him play off the cuff and do all the things that didn’t cement his place in the City team, then you have a very expensive player who will score eight or nine goals a season and just become another generic, nice, Arsenal forward. So the question for Arteta is, ‘Do you have the coaching nous and strength of will to do what Guardiola does with players and say, ‘You play there and only there’. We’ll know by the end of September or October which way it’s going to go.”
