It’s more how he reminds me to how Max Aarons was in the youth team (when Aarons played right wing). I don’t know if he’ll be able to make the transition but was curious to here your thoughts as I believe Aarons will leave this summer.
How does anyone else do it? Not everyone plays on a good team getting good service, yet players rise and get transferred to better teams all the time. Sargent has already failed up once. He's got to make it happen for himself next time.
I don't know I've ever seen him play anything like a FB/Wingback, and I'd be happy to be wrong, but my guess is he will find his success closer to goal. He's been a better finisher than he's shown this season. I, personally, never thought he was going to excel in the EPL (or upper levels of Bund) but I would not be surprised to see him establish himself as a regular in the yo-yo zone (or step down a league to become a more consistent performer.) But he's young. Hard to tell what a bit of seasoning might do.
Not sure if you read the Athletic article but I’m encouraged by the fact that he works his tail off to improve. I suspect McBride was also a player like that and he really did improve significantly over time. Too soon to write him off if you ask me.
In recent years I've not very often found myself in a place to defend @rgli13 but I gather from the posts that their position is that Sargent isn't good enough now for top-level soccer, and that he could make it happen in the future but should drop down a level so he doesn't just get his ass kicked every week (that last part is pretty much verbatim). I happen to completely agree. What's for sure is that Sargent hasn't done much to merit his move to a stronger league than he was in, and even though he got a really nice upwards move somehow, he hasn't done much to show anyone he belongs there at this stage. No doubt that he's still young and in several years could turn out to be the player many of us were hoping he'd be about now. A very good work ethic, as you noted, helps with this.
Sarge would never have stayed at Bremen, for two reasons. The first is that there are no parachute payments in BL2, so Bremen needed to sell 2-3 players urgently and Sarge was one of the 2 most saleable. The second is that Norwich weren't the only team to put in an offer. Bayer Leverkusen did so as well but were outbid on the wages and the transfer fee. It's a counterfactual that just wasn't ever going to happen
When he arrived in the Prem he didn't look good. At. All. Just another ho-hum tall, good-in-the-air striker that were a dime a dozen in England those days. By the time he left he was a well-respected craftsman and a two-time Player of the Season club icon. The only way you achieve that is by relentless hard work.
I'll be honest, the whole entire Nor'ich team isn't good enough to make it at the top level. The team is awful.
Well he played twice in the 2BL this year for Bremen and scored twice. Not a large sample size but damn do you all love to be negative about him. He has played on awful teams that have been and will be relegated. No doubt he would do really well in 2 BL, Championship will be a tougher challenge but Nor'ich has proven to dominate that level and he would no doubt benefit off that and probably look great.
I wouldn't be quite so harsh. Their opponents are often owned by rich sheiks, American zillionaires and oligarchs. This is what a team looks like that isn't.
Except they also play some "regular" old EPL teams, and they are not really matching up well their either. They do not have a particularly strong squad, but they also are not in any way playing above their individual abilities, and Pukki, in different circumstances, has shown the ability to score more (as a younger fella, to be fair.)
Wasn't being negative. Just offering the thought of how damaging it might have been if he wasn't able to score in the 2 Bundesliga. Maybe it would have been far better for him although he is learning a lot in the PL which will boost him in the future.
Sargent starts today against Jesse Marsch's Leeds United. 🚨 TEAM NEWS 🚨▪️ Three changes from our match against Chelsea▪️ Gibson, Rupp and Rashica back into starting XI▪️ Hanley misses out after a positive Covid-19 test#NCFC | #LEENOR pic.twitter.com/3Q1uQ75xGP— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) March 13, 2022
For Leeds at least, this is a traditional relegation 6-pointer. For Norwich, with 10 games left and 5 points to safety or 6 points to catch Leeds, you could almost call it a 9-pointer because a draw closes the gap on nobody and a loss leaves them exactly where they were but with 3 less points available. A win brings them to 20 points, just 3 behind Leeds (whose GD is almost as bad as the Canaries' GD) and 2 behind Everton. Another loss would be a hammer blow psychologically for Leeds, but in theory they could still stabilize. For Norwich, if they lose they'll have to start planning for the Championship at 9.00 am.
I just want to put something in perspective. Way better players than Josh have played on league dominating teams and looked awful but then a move away and they were superstars. Think Forlan at Man U, Lukaku, etc. There is always the argument that it isn’t the right team or league. The questions of what style of team, what league, and what role are valid. I actually don’t want to see him down one level in England but that is likely where he will be honing his trade next year. I think he would do better in one of the top two levels in Germany for a couple years…but that’s unlikely.
2-1 to Leeds it finishes, which is fair according to the XG (2.97 - 0.92). Leeds dominated, but couldn't finish the game off and Norwich equalized at the death. A draw being inadequate, they tried to push on for the winner only for Leeds to catch them with a long GK clearance for Raphina to run into the area, round the keeper and square it for a tap-in. It may be fair but, Jesus, football is a cruel game. They're as good as relegated now