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Doug King lifts lid on 'difficult' Viktor Gyokeres deal and prospect of transfer windfall

Will former Coventry City striker Viktor Gyokeres follow ex-Sporting boss Ruben Amorim to the English Premier League next summer and boost the Sky Blues transfer coffers in the process?
-Credit: (Image: PA)


Doug King has spoken about how “difficult” it was to get the Viktor Gyokeres deal done and the prospect of another significant cash injection in the summer if the player is sold, as expected, for a huge profit.

The club owner has revealed that the former Sky Blues star striker was determined to move to only one club, Sporting Lisbon, at the end of the 2022/23 campaign after City failed to gain promotion to the Premier League via the Championship play-off final against Luton Town.

King negotiated a deal that has earned the club around £20m so far and City could get a further £6.4m from a ten percent sell-on clause on the difference between what City sold him for and the figure he leaves for, if the Sweden international is sold for Sporting’s 100m Euro (around £84m) release clause.

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Gyokeres, who scored 18 goals in his first full season at the CBS Arena and 22 goals in his second, is arguably the hottest striker in Europe right now, having bagged an incredible 23 goals in 16 matches so far this term – including a hat-trick against Manchester City in the Champions League recently – having bagged 41 in 52 games in all competitions in his first season in Portugal.

Sporting boss Ruben Amorim has now joined Manchester United, leading to obvious speculation that Gyokeres will follow him to Old Trafford or another top flight English club in the summer.

Asked if he’s hopeful of Coventry getting a sell-on cash boost to help fund further strengthening at the end of this season, King told CoventryLive: “Look, the deal we did with Viktor was a difficult deal to get done. He was going to Sporting Lisbon, Sporting Lisbon, Sporting Lisbon or Sporting Lisbon and they felt they were going to get what they wanted and we had to fight hard to get our deal. And the deal we got, I thought, was pretty damn good considering he had one year left and could have signed a pre-contract in four months.

“He’s obviously shot the lights out, which tells you what he did for us in that 22/23 season where we played very transitionary football, and if he’d have got injured in that second half of the season... I was more concerned with relegation, to be honest with you.

“Look, it will come or it won’t. I was happy with the deal and if he flogs on for 100 million Euros then we get some money to put into the coffers. We have already invested a lot of money into this club.”

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