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.

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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 determined than ever, and he was just so single-minded and focused", Turner explained. "He just hit the ground running in that season.

"Obviously, no one knew at that stage what he would go on to achieve at Sporting, but they knew they had one of the best players and one of the best strikers in the division at that time.

"What was also key was when Coventry signed him on a permanent deal, he had somebody who believed in him, rather than just going out on loan and being a loan player. He was actually a Coventry City player, and he sort of really bought into the club and knew what Mark Robbins was trying to achieve.

"You could tell he was very single-minded. He wanted to, and Mark Robins admitted this, get to the highest place in his career as quickly as possible. He didn't want to mess around."

Turner has described how Gyokeres' mindset played a major role in his rise to the top, revealing that the Swede is highly driven on and off the pitch.

"In training, he was known to be a little bit grumpy, and that was largely due to the fact that he wanted everything done the right way," he admitted. "He had very high standards and made demands on his teammates. He was quite a serious guy off the pitch.

"On the pitch, he worked hard and was just really strong and a willing runner off the ball, a real team player as well. He was at his best when he had the ball at his feet and was running at defenders doing his thing."

Gyokeres' links to United make sense on several levels with Amorim now at M16 and looking to turn the Reds around. And Turner has revealed how important the Portuguese was to Gyokeres making the switch to Sporting in 2023.

"There was interest from the Premier League but his agent was fairly single-minded in knowing that it was the right step in his career", he shared.

"Ruben Amorim indicated that that was the player he wanted and that he could get the best out of him and kick on with his career. That connection was forged quite early on in the transfer window that summer, and they never strayed from that.

"There was only one club they wanted to go to, and that was it, and there was only one manager that he wanted to work with at that time and one coach, and that was Ruben Amorim. That's why obviously he's been so strongly linked with a move to Old Trafford since he's done so spectacularly well because there is that connection with the manager."