Everton in the hunt as Coventry City brace for wave of bids for £20million-rated Viktor Gyokeres this summer
Coventry City are expecting a “wave of summer bids” for striker Viktor Gyokeres with Everton continuing to monitor the 24-year-old, 90min reports.
The Toffees are one of a number of Premier League sides who are believed to have made approaches to the Sky Blues during the January window, but the Swede stayed put.
However, the Championship side expect that to be a tall order to repeat at the end of the season with a host of clubs “monitoring” the 18-goal man, as Everton are joined by Leeds, Brentford, Crystal Palace and Leicester.
Coventry have upped Gyokeres’ asking price from £18million to £20million since the winter window as he has continued his goalscoring form, and if they are not promoted to the top flight themselves clubs who are successful in that endeavour are expected to join the race for his services, according to 90min on Saturday (25 March).
Second time lucky?
Everton missed out on numerous attacking targets on deadline day in January as Sean Dyche was welcomed to the club with precisely nothing in the transfer market, and the Coventry man was one named as deadline day proved painfully empty.
Clearly, the group of interested Premier League clubs felt he was out of reach at the time or there would been a real rush for him on the final day of the window, but a deal didn’t seem close.
He has been in excellent form this year and his eight assists on top of the goals, which sees him second to Chuba Akpom in the second tier’s scoring charts, are a major reason that the Sky Blues are in the running for the play-offs.
He wouldn’t be the first player who wanted a chance to complete the job of gunning for promotion with his current side, but if he misses out this season the forward looks odds on to have a selection of options to make the step up.
Ellis Simms’ late equaliser at Chelsea has raised hopes that there is finally an alternative to the injured Dominic Calvert-Lewin in the ranks, but the goalscoring department needs addressing one way or another this summer.
It looks like being anything but a clear run at Gyokeres given how many teams are in the mix, but £20million for the goals that Everton have been sorely lacking for so much of the campaign is not a huge amount in Premier League terms so unless there are severe doubts about his ability to make the step up this one is worth keeping a keen eye on.