Stoke City boss explains key transfer decision as he ticks off ‘one of most important parts of team’
News from the bet365 Stadium as Stoke City welcome Viktor Johansson from Rotherham United as their first signing of the summer
Steven Schumacher and his ‘keeper coach Darren Behcet were tracking Viktor Johansson extensively since they arrived at Stoke City as they made a beeline to make him their new number one.
Johansson, aged 25, has become the first signing of Stoke’s first summer transfer window under head coach Schumacher as the club ends a long-term reliance on loan deals in goal. Stoke triggered a relegation release clause of about £1 million to bring him in from Rotherham United, where he had established himself as one of the leading keepers in the Championship, as both parties decided it was the right move this summer.
Johansson, who has now been called up by Sweden for friendlies in June, pretty much had his pick of clubs in the division while Stoke had a short list of options that also included Daniel Iversen, who had played a big part in keeping the club up while on loan from Leicester.
“I’m really pleased. It’s someone who we monitored through the whole of the second half of the season,” said Schumacher today in part of an extensive close-season interview with the Sentinel.
“We spoke about Viktor in January when we first came in but he was at Rotherham, who were still trying to survive and stay in the Championship. We knew what his contract situation was and what his buy-out clause was going to be come the end of the season.
“So he was a goalkeeper we watched extensively and Darren Behcet was always on to me with reports for him. Even though Rotherham were struggling at the bottom of the division, he was one of their stand out performers. It gave us a lot of time to make sure we were making the right decision.
“There were other goalkeepers that we considered, Daniel Iversen being one of them. He was brilliant for us in the run-in, by the way, excellent. I spoke to Daniel at the end of the season and his circumstances were always going to be difficult because we didn’t know if Leicester were going to go up. Now they have and Daniel’s contract situation has changed and it was going to be another conversation for us that might have dragged on.
“But we made our mind up. Once the season had ended and we did our recruitment, we talked about which direction we were going to go in and we decided let’s go for Viktor Johansson, having watched him through the second half of the season.
