Steven Schumacher has revealed that Leicester City’s promotion to the Premier League made it harder for Stoke City to turn Daniel Iversen’s loan into a permanent transfer.
Speaking to sister title StokeonTrentLive, the Potters’ boss was reflecting on the deal that saw them trigger Viktor Johansson’s release clause and bring him to the bet365 Stadium from relegated Rotherham United.
However, he also admitted that Johansson was one of a few goalkeepers the Championship outfit were considering, with Iversen, who spent the second half of the season on loan from City, another.
“There were other goalkeepers that we considered, Daniel Iversen being one of them,” he told the Sentinel. “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.”
Iversen returns to the King Power, where he first signed as a youngster in 2016 and where he has a contract until the summer of 2025. However, there is plenty of competition ahead of him and it’s difficult to see him getting any game-time in the Premier League as effectively fourth choice.
