Viktor Gyokeres makes permanent Coventry switch

Viktor Gyokeres has left Brighton & Hove Albion to sign permanently for Coventry City, with whom he ended the 2020-21 season on loan.

The Swede scored three times in 19 matches for the Sky Blues after switching from Swansea City in January, helping them to avoid relegation in their first Championship campaign for nine years.

Gyokeres had spent the first half of the campaign at the Liberty Stadium. He found first team opportunities to difficult come by in south Wales however, making just three starts and a further nine appearances for the bench. He scored once for the Swans in a 2-0 FA Cup third round win away against Alex Revell’s Stevenage.

Brighton paid IF Brommapojkarna £900,000 for Gyokeres in September 2017 but he did not arrive in Sussex until the following January. In a rather quaint story, his girlfriend Amanda Nildén moved to England with him, had a trial with the Albion’s women’s side and ended up being signed as well. She happens to be extremely fit, as is Viktor actually.

As well as being a handsome man off the pitch, Gyokeres made an instant impression on it by scoring seven times from nine appearances for the Under 23s in the second half of 2017-18 to help them win promotion to the top flight of Premier League 2.

That form saw Viktor Gyokeres made his senior Brighton debut in a 1-0 League Cup defeat against Southampton in August 2018. Seven goals in 19 matches followed for the development squad in 2018-19 and Chris Hughton gave him further first team minutes in all four of Brighton’s FA Cup matches prior to the quarter final at Millwall when the big guns were brought back in.

So highly rated was Gyokeres in his home country that he made his full international debut for Sweden before his league debut for Brighton – a league debut which never came.

His first game for his country was a 1-0 defeat to Finland on January 8th 2019. His second saw him score his first goal in the famous yellow shirt, notching in a 2-2 draw against Iceland.

A new Brighton contract was signed in the summer of 2019 before a reasonably successful loan spell with St Pauli in Bundesliga 2 in 2019-20 brought seven goals in 28 appearances. He then scored his first Brighton goal in last season’s 4-0 League Cup win over Portsmouth.

Many wondered at that point whether Graham Potter would pitch him into top flight action, given the Albion manager’s constant insistence that spending millions of pounds on a “silver bullet” was not the answer to the club’s striker problems when he could try and coach more goals from the existing roster of forwards.

Gyokeres never received that opportunity and instead he headed for Swansea City. It is a shame that he did not get a chance in the Premier League, especially when you consider how many chances a player whose attitude is clearly questionable in Aaron Connolly keeps receiving.

If Viktor Gyokeres had played 46 times for Brighton in all competitions as Connolly has done, would he have offered a better return than Connolly’s six goals? Unfortunately, we will never find out.

At the age of 23, Gyokeres needs to start playing first team football. He will at least get that at Coventry, whose manager Mark Robins spoke in glowing terms about the striker during his time there last season.

“He’s a young player who I feel is in the most difficult position as a striker on the pitch, you have a player there who is learning his trade and trying to get into a team like ours,” Robins told the Coventry Telegraph after the Sky Blues secured survival shortly after Gyokeres had scored the winner in a 3-2 victory at Stoke City.

“He’s been frustrated at times but he has stuck with it and I saw something flipped in him and he then became part of the group. And that’s testament to his character because he could have gone and sulked and gone under but he’s not done that.”

“I would consider signing him permanently all day because as a young striker he’s got that desire and mentality, so yeah, I’d definitely consider him for moving forward. One hundred per cent.” Robins has now got his man for an undisclosed fee.