Man Utd have deal 'in place' to sign Viktor Gyokeres

Tom Weber

Updated: 8 Feb 2025 15:31 CST
3 min read

Manchester United did not replace Marcus Rashford in January because a deal for Viktor Gyokeres is already 'in place for the summer,' according to Miguel Delaney.

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The Red Devils have struggled all season with scoring goals and their problems have shown no signs of subsiding since the appointment of Ruben Amorim in November.

Strikers Joshua Zirkzee and Rasmus Hojlund have both failed to impress this term. In the early parts of the campaign, it was the former who came under heavy criticism, but more recently, it has been young Hojlund's turn to come under fire.

READ MORE: Antony breaks Man Utd CURSE

The 22-year-old has been really poor in recent fixtures whereas Zirkzee has at least noticeably improved since getting hooked by Amorim to a chorus of Old Trafford boos against Newcastle after just 33 minutes in late December.

Despite Man Utd's woes in front of goal, they refrained from adding to their frontline in January and, in fact, actually offloaded attackers Antony and Marcus Rashford.

Man Utd to sign Gyokeres?

However, according to journalist Miguel Delaney of The Independent there is a good reason for Man Utd's decision not to bring in a forward in January and it wasn't simply down to their financial situation.

Delaney claims that 'the noise at the end of the window' suggested that Man Utd had already laid the groundwork to bring in Amorim's former Sporting CP superstar Viktor Gyokeres in the summer.

"The club did not replace [Rashford] with any forward... and the thinking there is that Sporting’s Viktor Gyokeres is in place for the summer," he wrote in his Reading the Game newsletter. "Things can change, of course, but this was very much the noise at the end of the window."

Gyokeres has a €100 million release clause and Sporting would have insisted on it being triggered in January, but the Lisbon club have already agreed to let the Swede leave in the summer for €60m-€70m.