Gyok will be hot property after goal rush – boss
MARK Robins admits that Premier League clubs will be looking at Coventry City’s leading scorer Viktor Gyokeres this summer.
The Sky Blues’ star striker took his season’s overall tally to an outstanding 18 on Saturday when he scored his side’s only goal in a 1-1 draw at Stoke City in the last match of the Championship campaign.
Robins has spoken to his board and he and the club are in agreement that they want to try to keep hold of the Sweden international along with the club’s other two key assets, Callum O’hare and Gustavo Hamer, in the forthcoming transfer window when all three are expected to be the subject of intense interest and speculation.
Asked about his achievement of getting 18 goals, Robins said: “It could have been 19 and I have said to him, because he’ll go straight to the ones he’s missed, but it’s about the 18 he has scored. It’s a brilliant return for his first full season in the Championship, so that’s a good start for him.
“He knows what it’s all about, he can handle the physical side, he’s quick enough and powerful. With just a little more refinement and he’s a top player.”
Asked how good he can be, the manager said: “Vik can do anything! He just needs to tidy up a bit but you can see there’s a really top player in there, a really top player.
There are just bits of his game that he needs to improve on, and when I say tidy up I mean some of his link play is outstanding and then sometimes he gives the ball away, so I am looking for his feet to move a little bit better at times and he needs a bit more rhythm. We need to get him on the dance floor a bit!”
And asked if he sees him as a future Premier League player, Robins said: “Who knows! I think he has all the physical attributes for that and he’s scored 18 goals in his first full season in the Championship so there will definitely be people looking at him from the Premier League, one hundred percent.”
So does he feel that City could be a victim of Gyokeres’s success this summer?
“You can look at it like that but it can also be a positive,” he said. “It can be something you are doing really well and in a position where you can say, ‘no, we’re not selling yet, it’s not right,’ then you can build on top of that and you have also got that asset in the building that’s developing and getting better, and the asset value is going up.
“They are still young. There are still a lot of youngsters in the team so alongside that if we can keep people together and add to it then clearly we have got a really good chance of adding quality in there and becoming better next season.”