I followed 'grumpy' Viktor Gyokeres at Coventry City - this is why Manchester United need him

Viktor Gyokeres has been a name linked with Manchester United almost ever since Ruben Amorim's appointment at Old Trafford was confirmed.

The Swedish striker has transformed himself into a goalscoring machine with an astonishing 78 goals across all competitions at Sporting Lisbon since moving to Portugal in July 2023. Gyokeres is likely to be one of Europe's most in-demand players this summer.

But his rise to stardom has taken time. How he became the player he is today can be traced back to a two-and-a-half-year spell at Coventry City in the Championship.

Gyokeres arrived at the CBS Arena on loan from Brighton & Hove Albion in January 2021. And one person who followed Gyokeres' transformation from a middle-of-the-range forward to one almost every club in Europe would want is CoventryLive's Andy Turner, who has covered the Sky Blues for 27 years.

"It took him time to get going but everybody could see the raw attributes were there", Turner told The Manchester Evening News.

"It wasn't until towards the end of the season that the fans and certainly the coaches as well started to think, 'we might have something here'.

"The first team coach and assistant manager at the time, Adi Viveash, went on record once he'd left, sort of saying that he wasn't sure whether he was the real deal or not. But he credited Mark Robins [Coventry manager at the time] for being firm in his opinion that he was a top player in the making".

After scoring just five times during his initial six-month loan spell at Coventry, he went on to score 40 goals across two seasons after joining on a permanent deal the following summer. So how did such a dramatic transformation come about?

"He came back [in the summer] stronger, hungrier, fitter and more