Following the completion of Viktor Gyokeres’ transfer to Arsenal, writer Ben Bloom looks at the forward's journey to Emirates Stadium via seven clubs and five nations.
It was January 2021, in the midst of the United Kingdom's third Covid-19 lockdown, that Viktor Gyokeres’ career appeared to reach a crossroads.
Sent out on loan for a second successive season by a Brighton & Hove Albion hierarchy keen for him to experience the first-team football they felt they could not offer, Gyokeres had instead spent the main part of three frustrating months warming the bench of Championship side Swansea City.
Things were clearly not working for either party. So, less than halfway into the agreed loan period, he was recalled by Brighton.
Struggling for game time at a second-tier club, the idea that Gyokeres would become one of Europe’s most in-demand forwards within a few years was implausible.
Yet, it is on him that Arsenal have staked their Premier League title hopes as they seek to become champions following three consecutive second-place finishes.
Aged 27, the one-time Swedish wonder kid has completed a winding path to the top of his sport. Where Gyokeres is concerned, the route has been far from linear.
Signing for Brighton
When Brighton secured the signature of one of Sweden’s brightest young talents soon after his 19th birthday it was seen as quite the coup for the south-coast club.
Gyokeres’ formal footballing education had begun aged five when his parents convinced him – against his wishes – to join IFK Aspudden-Tellus, his local club in Stockholm.
“They thought I should train with a team, which I didn’t like at first,” he later explained, while crediting the help of his father Stefan, who joined the club as a coach at the same time. “Making that journey together helped me a lot. We’d share good and bad moments.”
By his early teenage years he had switched to the city’s famous talent factory of IF Brommapojkarna that has also developed Premier League players including Dejan Kulusevski, John Guidetti and Lucas Bergvall. It was there that Gyokeres began his conversion from winger to centre-forward.
‘Totally ruthless’
“Whilst everybody else had normal training, I was training by myself on the other side of the pitch, honing something so basic,” he said. “It was incredibly tough, but it took me to the next level.”
Such was his ability that he was handed a first-team debut shortly after his 17th birthday, soon becoming a regular presence in the Brommapojkarna starting XI over the following two campaigns.
His coaches remember a player with unrivalled determination. “If he had the chance to score, it doesn’t matter if he broke his leg, he needs to score,” former Brommapojkarna academy director Peter Kisfaludy told The Athletic last year. “He is not afraid, he is totally ruthless.
“He grew a lot and didn’t have the technique for it initially. He has always been so physical. He could play senior football early because he was strong and fast.”
With his output in front of goal steadily increasing, Gyokeres signed an agreement to move to Brighton at the conclusion of a 2017 season that brought Brommapojkarna promotion to the top tier. Bidding to secure the title in his final game, Gyokeres signed off with a fairytale hat-trick in a 4-1 win.
Loan rollercoaster
While he ended his first few months as a Brighton player with goals in four successive Premier League 2 (PL2) games, Gyokeres’ desired rise to the first-team ranks was harder to come by.
Once upon a time for Viktor Gyokeres…
— Premier League (@premierleague) July 27, 2025
The striker was an unused sub on three occasions for Brighton in the Premier League 😮 pic.twitter.com/I2Yf4AHAux
FA Cup and EFL Cup appearances were fleeting, and he spent the entire 2019/20 campaign on loan at German club St. Pauli, for whom he scored seven goals in 28 matches. Then came the dispiriting Swansea switch, where he failed to find the net in 11 almost entirely substitute appearances.
Fortunately, at a time when his future appeared decidedly uncertain, Gyokeres had a supporter in Chris Badlan, then in charge of recruitment at Coventry City, who had tracked the Swede’s progress from his Brommapojkarna days.
“He fit the profile of what we wanted – a powerful, athletic forward who would stretch the play,” Badlan told the Daily Mail.
An unremarkable loan spell at Coventry for the second half of the 2020/21 campaign yielded only three goals in 19 appearances, but that was sufficient to convince the Sky Blues to sign him permanently. By the start of the following season, Gyokeres had emerged as a different specimen.
“Viktor’s biggest strength is his mentality," Badlan told ESPN last year. “When he decides he’s going to do something, he’s the type that will do it. He went away that summer almost as a man on a mission.
“He worked on his strengths. He was already a powerful runner but all of a sudden his shoulders, he got a bit more square, stronger in his core. It enabled him to roll defenders better. His mentality is ridiculous.”
Over the following two seasons – now fully converted from a left-sided forward to a traditional No 9 – he scored 40 goals in 97 matches for the club, becoming one of the most prolific strikers in the Championship and helping Coventry to the narrowest of FA Cup semi-final defeats against Manchester United.
The Swansea blip was forgotten and another step up was on the cards.
Watch every goal Gyokeres scored for Coventry
Move to Sporting
Having boldly informed Coventry that he only desired a transfer to sufficiently prestigious destinations, Gyokeres headed off to 21-times Portuguese champions Sporting for a reported club-record fee in the summer of 2023.
It was a move that saw him flourish beyond recognition. In his first season, he scored 29 Primeira Liga goals in 33 games. Last campaign, he struck an astonishing 39 times in the same number of matches, while also scoring six goals in the UEFA Champions League, including a hat-trick against Manchester City.
Watch Gyokeres' Sporting highlights
Dos melhores da nossa história. @viktor_gyokeres 🦁 pic.twitter.com/RMTDdjQI6E
— Sporting CP (@SportingCP) July 26, 2025
“To get to the level he’s got to, you have to have a bit of luck, like everybody, but you still have to have that mentality,” said Badlan. “Viktor has always wanted to be the best player he could be, and he’s gone and done that.”
Arsenal’s sixth summer signing after their capture of Kepa Arrizabalaga, Martin Zubimendi, Christian Norgaard, Noni Madueke and Cristhian Mosquera, Gyokeres is now, belatedly, poised to make his Premier League debut when the new season begins next month.
So, what do Brighton – the club that shifted him on all those years ago – make of his development?
“Players develop at different rates,” their chief executive Paul Barber explained to The Athletic.
“In 2021, when Viktor was transferred to Coventry, his pathway here wasn’t clear and, with his contract running down, he wanted a permanent home. We have to accept the decision to sell for what it was at that time – right for the player, and right for the club.
“What Viktor has gone on to do is fantastic. Everyone is delighted for him. He is a great lad and has become a fantastic player, good luck to him.”