Tag: Andy Turner

Quick Vik sped to the very top after sluggish Albion start

VIKTOR GYÖKERES is certainly right up there in Brighton’s short list of ‘ones that got away’.

The striker left the Seagulls for Coventry in a £1m deal, went on to score almost a goal a game over two seasons for Sporting Lisbon, joined Arsenal for £63.5m in the summer of 2025, and played for Sweden at the 2026 World Cup finals.

His meteoric rise from Brighton ‘reject’ to one of Europe’s hottest strikers is a story that’s unsurprisingly been seized upon by various media outlets.

“Viktor, he was a young lad at the club and was he up to the level? Well, the manager (Chris Hughton) didn’t think he was up to the level,” former teammate Glenn Murray admitted when speaking with 10bet. “We were in a squad where we were in survival mode, and you couldn’t really bring lads in to develop them.

A rare Brighton first team outing for Gyökeres against Manchester United

“In all honesty, it was one of those situations where he made that hard decision to leave the Premier League and in hindsight, it was the right decision to leave.”

Murray added: “Did I see it coming what has happened? Probably not. It just shows what belief in yourself, other people’s belief and confidence can do for you.”

Born in Stockholm on 4 June 1998, Gyökeres was only five when he started playing football with IFK Aspudden-Tellus. He first drew the attention of football scouts after he had joined Stockholm-based club Brommapojkarna as a 16-year-old, initially as a winger.

“We saw that he had the abilities to be a No. 9 with his strength and breakthrough capacity and started to focus on those abilities,” Brommapojkarna scout David Eklund told ESPN. “He grew a lot and started to produce goals more and more regularly.”

He was also selected for Sweden’s national youth sides and he started to earn a ‘wonderkid’ tag. Some observers reckoned he was the country’s biggest attacking talent since Zlatan Ibrahimović.

Brighton agreed to sign him in September 2017 but he remained with Brommapojkarna until the end of their season, finishing in style with a hat-trick in his last game which earned the club promotion to the Allsvenskan as champions.

He arrived in Sussex in January 2018, initially linking up with the under-23s.

Ahead of the 2018-19 season, he saw action with the first team in pre-season friendlies, scoring the only goal of the game in a behind-closed-doors win over Nice at the French club’s training ground, going on for Murray on 34 minutes in a 1-1 draw with Swiss side St Gallen, replacing Solly March for the last 20 minutes of a 2-1 defeat to AFC Wimbledon and finally getting half an hour as sub for James Tilley in a 1-1 draw at Charlton.

That involvement led to him making his competitive first team debut in an inexperienced line-up that lost 1-0 at home to Southampton in the Carabao Cup. Fellow youngsters Ben Barclay and Will Collar also started and £17m (then) record signing Alireza Jahanbakhsh made his debut.

On as a sub at Bournemouth

January 2019 was a memorable month for Gyökeres: three days after going on as a late sub for Anthony Knockaert in Albion’s home FA Cup third round 3-1 win over Bournemouth, he made his full international debut for Sweden in a 1-0 defeat to Finland and on 11 January scored a goal in his country’s 2-2 draw with Iceland.

Gyökeres was then featured in the matchday programme for the home FA Cup fourth round 0-0 draw with West Brom, when he was again a sub. He started the replay at The Hawthorns when Albion won 3-1.

In the following round, he got on as a sub when replacing Jurgen Locadia in Albion’s 2-1 win over Derby County, although he wasn’t involved in the quarter or semi-final matches.

But with that small amount of first team involvement, and having scored seven times in 19 games for the under-23s, Gyökeres had done enough for Albion to offer him a new three-year contract.

On target from the penalty spot

After signing he said: “I like this club and it feels like they believe in me.

“I want to do my best to prove that I can do good things here. I moved to another country with another language, so of course it’s been different compared to Sweden, but I’ve settled in well.

“It’s been good to train with the first team and travel with them to away games this season – it’s been a great experience and hopefully there will be more of that in the future.

“Next season I want to do better than I’ve done this year. Of course, I’d like to play in the first team, but I’ve got to work hard in pre-season, see what happens and what is best for me.”

Alas, what happened next was the departure of Hughton and the arrival of Graham Potter (now Gyökeres’ manager with the Swedish national side).

Instead of continuing his development at Brighton, he was sent on a season-long loan to St Pauli (Fabian Hurzeler’s former side) in the second tier of the Bundesliga at the start of the 2019-20 season. He scored seven goals in 28 appearances in Germany before returning to the Albion.

When Gyökeres played his first game under Potter, it was at an empty Amex because of the Covid-19 pandemic. He scored (above) playing as a lone striker as Brighton beat Portsmouth 4-0 in the Carabao Cup after which Potter said: “He has got attributes that are different. It’s not the easiest  to play up front on his own. He kept going, he got his rewards at the end.”

Although he also played in the same competition’s 2-0 win over Preston North End and 3-0 defeat to Manchester United, the arrival of Danny Welbeck put another obstacle in the way of his first team opportunities and he was loaned out to Potter’s former club, Championship side Swansea City.

On making the move, Gyökeres admitted Potter and his assistants Billy Reid and Bjorn Hamberg had all recommended the move to south Wales. “I spoke to them a little bit as they had been here,” he told Swansea’s website. “They only had good things to say and that made me more comfortable to come here and play here.”

However, the loan was cut short after he’d made only three starts plus nine sub appearances and scored just one goal for Steve Cooper’s side, in an FA Cup third-round game at Stevenage.

He returned to Brighton but several things aligned that resulted in him joining Coventry City for the remainder of the season.

Chris Badlan, then head of recruitment for the Sky Blues, told ESPN: “Viktor is someone me and my chief scout at the time, Stuart Benthom, knew about when he was playing out in Sweden.

“As a scout, you need to know who the best 16/17-year-olds are who are playing on the continent. Brighton had signed him so we followed him in their under-23s, he then went to St. Pauli and we just kept tracking him like you always do.”

Coventry already had Albion’s Leo Østigård on loan and he convinced Gyökeres to join him and, as Badlan pointed out: “We had two or three centre-forwards injured at the same time so we could show him the opportunity. It all married up because he wanted to play and we needed a striker straight away.”

After scoring three times in 19 appearances, Gyökeres joined Coventry permanently in July 2021, reportedly for £1m, with manager Mark Robins saying: “Viktor is a talented striker with good power, pace and movement, and great potential. He showed a terrific attitude when he was with us on loan.

“He grew in confidence, and we hope that he will continue to show the same improvement and desire.”

According to Badlan, that summer Gyökeres spent his holiday time working hard on his conditioning. “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.”

Badlan also reckoned much credit for the player’s development should go to former Manchester United forward Robins and his assistant Adi Viveash, who was used to nurturing talent having spent 10 years with Chelsea’s academy and under-23s.  

“They polished the rough diamond that he was. They simplified his game. They worked with him in identifying his best attributes.

“Mark, being an ex-striker, helped Viktor understand his body, getting his positioning right, where to make runs, when to get the timing right.”

And it paid off big time. He began the season with nine goals in his first 11 games finished the season as top scorer with 18 goals and repeated the feat in 2022-23, finishing on 22 as City made it to the Championship play-off final but lost on penalties to Luton Town.

It was at Coventry where he began his distinctive goal celebration – covering half his face with interlocking fingers to resemble a mask a la Bane, the villain in 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises.

Reporter Andy Turner, who has covered Coventry for the Coventry Telegraph for more than 20 years, was asked his opinion of the player by several media outlets.

“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,” said Turner. “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.”

Similar thoughts came from Josh Kerr, who played in the same Albion under-23 side as Gyökeres. Interviewed by Sky Sports, Kerr said: “He’s probably one of the most ruthless players that I’ve seen when he’s on the halfway line and he’s going to goal from the left.

“It was just the pace and power, sometimes teams couldn’t cope with that.”

November 2022 player of the month award

Kerr highlighted the Swede’s willingness to put in a shift for the team, saying: “He would do it without you having to ask him – which is massive for certain teams or managers.

“He was just a good guy and that’s what you get from him. Works hard, does his job for the team.

“We obviously rated him highly then but we didn’t think he would kick on as much as he has, which has been quite incredible.”

The Telegraph’s Turner heaped praise on the player, saying: “He’s so strong on the ball, he protects the ball really well, he will take on two or three players in the box and will somehow get past them.

“He is a formidable striker. He is like an old school centre-forward in stature but he is very good with the ball at his feet. Technically he is good but he is very strong, it’s difficult to shrug him off the ball and he plays with a swagger.”

Maybe if Coventry had reached the Premier League in 2023, he would have stayed but plenty of clubs had noted his scoring prowess and, with a year left on his contract, he opted to move to Portugal to play for Sporting Lisbon under Ruben Amorim.

• See my pre-Arsenal blog post for what happened next.

Nicky Rust played more than 200 games then quit at 24

IT SEEMS extraordinary that a young goalkeeper who played more than 200 first-team games for Brighton quit the professional game at 24.

Nicky Rust had been one of the country’s elite young players when he graduated from the FA School of Excellence at Lilleshall. Then, at Arsenal, he was coached by the club’s legendary former ‘keeper Bob Wilson and trained alongside England international David Seaman.

But with little likelihood of 18-year-old Rust dislodging the established Seaman any time soon (and Alan Miller as back-up), Arsenal let him go in the spring of 1993. He ended up playing for five different managers in five years with the Albion.

Young Rust found himself picking the ball out of his net after only four minutes of his debut in Albion’s colours. That was on trial on 23 April 1993 away to Norwich City when Albion’s reserves, under Larry May, were looking for their first win in TWENTY attempts!

The Canaries included big money signing Efan Ekoku in their side and he opened the scoring before Rust had even had chance to break into a sweat.

However, a fairly strong Brighton side, including striker Andy Kennedy, returning to action after a back injury, Ian Chapman and Dean Wilkins, equalised with a Wilkins special: a 25-yard free kick that flew into the top corner past Mark Walton, a goalkeeper who would join Brighton five years later. Kennedy won it for the Albion with a cool finish past Walton in the last minute of the game.

Rust’s arrival was as a direct replacement for Mark Beeney, whose £350,000 move to Leeds three days previously had quite literally saved the club from going under (all the money went to pay an overdue tax bill with the Inland Revenue threatening to wind up the Albion).

By the time the summer came round, cash-strapped Albion also let go long-serving ‘keeper Perry Digweed, who’d been with the club for 12 years. So Rust, still only 18, suddenly found himself first choice at the start of the new season.

“I was thrown in the deep end and didn’t have time to think about nerves,” Rust told the Argus in a 2002 interview. “Barry Lloyd brought me in. Obviously, like any youngster, I had aspirations of making it in the Premiership.”

Arsenal boss George Graham was a former teammate of Lloyd’s going back to their days together at Chelsea and that friendship had already helped Albion obtain the services of defender Colin Pates on loan two years earlier (Pates also made a permanent move to the Albion that summer).

“Arsenal were and are a big club,” said Rust. “I had Bob Wilson as a goalkeeping coach and David Seaman was there offering me a lot of good, sound advice. He was a bit like myself in temperament, laid back, and we got on very well. But unfortunately for me it didn’t work out, and I was released. I was pleased Albion wanted me.”

Albion lost their opening two games, 2-0 at Bradford City in the league and 1-0 at Gillingham in the League Cup but two wins and a draw followed. While the side’s subsequent poor form ultimately led to the end of Lloyd’s reign, Rust kept his place when Liam Brady took over and was Albion’s regular no.1 for the next four years, much of which was played out against huge turbulence off the pitch.

“There was a lot of turmoil when I was there and saving our league status was a huge relief and was, in a strange way, one of my highlights,” he said. “The club’s problems were constantly there in the background and we were getting headlines for all the wrong reasons.”

On the pitch, Rust only missed two games in his first three years at the Albion. He equalled a club record for clean sheets with five on the bounce across February and March 1995.

The young goalkeeper had his own place in Portslade and also proved to be something of a landlord for other young players. He welcomed to his home temporarily during their loan spells former Arsenal teammates Mark Flatts and Paul Dickov and, longer term, striker Junior McDougald who had been at Lilleshall at the same time.

“Even though he was ex-Spurs and I was an ex-Gunner we got on really well,” he said. “We came from similar areas. I was from Cambridgeshire and he was from Huntingdonshire.”

Rust played his 100th league game for the Albion away to Bournemouth the day before he celebrated his 21st birthday on 25 September 1995. Teammate Steve Foster celebrated his 38th birthday on the day of the game, which Brighton lost 3-1. “Fozzie was a big influence in the dressing room,” Rust remembered. “He was highly respected and one of the loud characters. I certainly got my ear bent.”

Rust’s 210 games for Albion place him eighth in the list of longest-serving goalkeepers in the club’s entire history. But an injury and loss of form in the 1996-97 season led to him losing his place to local lad Mark Ormerod, who had started the season and was in goal for the final six matches when Albion only just survived dropping out of the league.

Rust had to play a waiting game as Ormerod continued as first choice at the start of the 1997-98 season. Unluckily for him, his chance of returning to the starting XI coincided with his partner having their first child. In November 1997, after only two wins in 15 matches, manager Steve Gritt was planning to rest Ormerod and reinstate Rust for an away game at Hull City.

But Rust’s pregnant partner went into labour and he dashed to be with her for the birth. Typically, Ormerod kept the first away clean sheet Albion had managed for TWENTY months and when he repeated the feat the following Saturday at Hartlepool, they were the first successive clean sheets since Rust’s run of five in March 1995!

Rust had to wait another fortnight, after Ormerod had been beaten twice in a defeat at home to Rotherham, before finally getting his chance to return to first-team duties.

Before long he demonstrated what he was capable of in a game close to home territory, at Peterborough United on 28 December 1997.

Albion were under severe pressure but held on for a 2-1 win and Gritt said: “We showed a great deal of fighting spirit and commitment to overcome their attacks and, on the day, had Nicky Rust in superb form to keep them out when they got through our last line of defence.”

The game was marred by young Darragh Ryan breaking a leg but Jeff Minton celebrated his 24th birthday by scoring Albion’s first goal and substitute Robbie Reinelt added Albion’s second – the first goal he’d scored since that all-important equaliser in the last game of the previous season at Hereford.

It came halfway through a run of 17 league games Rust played that season, the last of which (a 2-0 defeat at Exeter City) coincided with Gritt’s last game in charge.

New boss Brian Horton went with Ormerod and Rust had to watch on from the sidelines, although he did prove quite adept at offering his opinion on matches when drafted in as a summariser for South Coast Radio coverage of games.

The matchday programme noted he had been “doing an excellent job with his inside knowledge whilst, at the same time, earning the respect of his fellow players whose loved ones have been listening at home”.

While admitting he’d rather have been playing, Rust said he enjoyed the commentary banter. “His perception of the game and sense of humour have certainly come through on the air; they have received many favourable comments from listeners,” the programme noted.

However, disillusioned with life as an understudy, Rust chose to leave the Seagulls at the end of that season.

“I had got used to being No.1, but I wasn’t complacent and worked hard to get back in,” he told the Argus. “But it wasn’t the best of times for me.

“Brian Horton called me in one day and said: ‘You’re not in the team, how are you feeling?’ I said I thought I needed a new challenge. He told me not to rush into anything and I waited until the end of the season when I still felt the same way. It was very amicable.”

However, the grass definitely wasn’t greener on the other side. He spent pre-season with Orient but didn’t get taken on and moved to Barnet instead.

On his debut for Barnet, he picked the ball out the back of his net NINE times as the ‘keeper’s new club went down 9-1 at home to Peterborough, the cause not being helped by two Barnet players being sent off, one as early as the ninth minute.

After only two games for Barnet, Rust switched to Conference side Farnborough Town (where former Albion defender Wayne Stemp was playing at the time).

“The trouble was that the only contract Barnet could afford, because of limited finances, was just not enough,” Rust told the Argus. “It just wasn’t viable for me to sign it. I had a young family, my partner Clare, a childhood sweetheart by the way, and baby daughter Eloise to consider. Quite simply, the family came first. I wasn’t prepared to put them at risk by being selfish.” They later had a son, Harrison.

Rust chose to quit the full-time game and went on to run his own building business.

“A lot of goalkeepers go on forever but, in my case, I thought, at 24, that I ought to go out and get a proper job,” he said. “I don’t regret it for a moment.”

He went on to play non-league closer to home with Cambridge City and later helped out with once-a-week goalkeeper coaching.

Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, on 25 September 1974, his father Alistair was a policeman in Great Shelford, just south of Cambridge, and his mother Corinne ran her own curtain making business. Rust was one of five children: there were three brothers (James, Philip and Thomas) and a sister (Francesca).

From Swavesey Primary School he moved on to Sawston Village College and the promising youngster was chosen for the Cambridgeshire and East Anglia representative sides.

He then gained a place at the FA School of Excellence at Lilleshall. Apart from McDougald, other contemporaries were Kevin Sharp and Jamie Forrester from Leeds United and Tottenham’s Sol Campbell, Danny Hill and Andy Turner.

Rust had trials at Tottenham and Luton Town, and Manchester United showed some interest, but he chose Arsenal as an associated schoolboy. It was the summer of 1991 when he joined them on a full-time basis as a YTS trainee.

The young ‘keeper played for England at under 15, under 16 and under 18 level and after joining the Albion was at one point put on standby for England under 21s.