ZingSync

Josh Sargent had been waiting a while for a rest. When one arrived last week, its timing proved impeccable.

The USMNT striker was the only Norwich City player involved in the World Cup, keeping him busy through late November while his club colleagues put their feet up.

Within days of the USA’s round-of-16 exit to the Netherlands in Qatar’s desert heat on December 3, Sargent was back in the freezing-cold UK and nursing an ankle injury before reacclimatising himself to Norwich’s return to Championship action following its four-week break for the playing of the tournament’s group stage.

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He played the full 90 minutes at Swansea City on December 10, in what proved to be Dean Smith’s final victory as the club’s head coach.

Come last week, Sargent finally got some family time away while the rest of Norwich’s squad pushed themselves to impress new head coach David Wagner, whose appointment as the fired Smith’s replacement was confirmed on the Friday.

Two days and two training sessions later, Wagner began his tenure with a 1-0 home FA Cup exit at the hands of Championship rivals Blackburn, but that was just a taster of the new head coach’s reign.

As for Sargent, it wasn’t until Wednesday that he finally took part in one of Wagner’s training sessions.

All of which poses the question: what does the 51-year-old former U.S. international’s arrival at Norwich mean for Sargent’s role and his involvement for the rest of this season? Let The Athletic break it down…

The pressing machine

For all of his fits and starts and scoring droughts, one part of Sargent’s game has kept him on the field: his pressing.

From the time he broke through with Werder Bremen in Germany’s Bundesliga, Sargent has been viewed as an industrious line leader. According to FBref’s percentile data (which compares his output to the rest of the “next eight” leagues in their database — this includes competitions outside Europe’s traditional big five, such as MLS, the Dutch Eredivisie, the Portuguese Primera Liga and the Copa Libertadores, South America’s Champions League equivalent) — the U.S. international is still among the best front-line defenders outside of the top five leagues.

Josh Sargent

*Percentiles compared to positional peers (strikers) in men’s “next eight” competitions over the last 365 days, based on Sargent’s 1,913 minutes played since January 11, 2022.

No matter the preferred formation Wagner ultimately settles on using at Norwich (and believe me, we’ll get to that later), Sargent will have value. What’s really made him a near-undroppable option up top is what he’s added to his game since leaving Germany.

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With Bremen, Sargent was viewed as a pace merchant and a pest: someone whose work rate was among the very best parts of his skill set. A year and a half from his move to Norwich in the summer of 2021, he has bulked up and become an even more worthy adversary to opposing back lines as he can muscle off center-backs in all phases of play.

That development has been necessary to keep up with the physical rigour of the Championship, English football’s second tier, where Sargent has looked far more at home this season than during his first stint in the Premier League a year ago.

While there are selection issues for Wagner to sort out in the attacking third, Sargent’s top-level defensive work will undoubtedly keep him at the top of the manager’s mind — especially as Wagner demanded, on his appointment, that Norwich become “the fittest team in the league, the most energetic team in the league, the most aggressive team in the league”.

Playing in a central role

It was an inevitable way to work through a selection issue but it is yet to work.

Sargent’s arrival at Carrow Road came with centre-forward being the club’s greatest position of strength, with Teemu Pukki — now one of the club’s all-team goalscorers — having remained at Norwich following relegation from the Premier League in 2020 and scoring 26 league goals the following season to help them go straight back up as Championship winners.

Attempts to force a 5-3-2 formation under then-coach Daniel Farke failed miserably and his successor, Smith, would often shunt Sargent onto the wing. It makes sense: so often these days, if a young striker shows high work rate on both sides of the ball, they’re turned into makeshift inverted wingers if a more traditional or veteran striker, Pukki in this case, is on-hand.

However, it doesn’t appear that the man who steered Huddersfield Town to Premier League promotion six years ago will try a similar gambit.

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“I know him very well from Germany,” said Wagner, who was born there and went on to both play and manage in the Bundesliga. “For me, he is a central striker. It isn’t his best position to help out on the wing. He can help out there but it’s not where he can play to his strengths.

“His season was not too bad so far, with everything he has shown. He’s still a young guy and I’m really looking forward to working with him.”

Those words from Wagner will have been music to Sargent’s ears.

The 22-year-old is careful with his words when you speak to him but it was often the pause and subtle body language that gave away his desire for game time in a central role — even immediately after his more positive moments when tasked with wider duties.

While a national team is a completely different beast from club football, Sargent’s central deployment at the recent World Cup gives some reinforcement about how he can play at the top of a pressing 4-3-3, which U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter utilized in Qatar.

What well-organized visuals like those above can’t show is the third facet of Sargent’s game alongside his pressing and scoring: his hold-up work.

The striker took a beating against Iran’s defense in the final group game as he kept the ball from turning over while quick wingers, in Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah, found their avenues to break beyond the back line.

Sargent missed the U.S.’s eventual elimination by the Netherlands four days later due to an ankle injury, which stemmed from an accumulation of kicks and shoves as play against Iran progressed. Nevertheless, his yeoman’s work did create just enough space for the wingers to connect on Pulisic’s eventual matchwinner.

A similar level of off-ball work rate was evident in the group opener against Wales.

Although Norwich lacks a similar level of wide attackers to his national team, Sargent’s effort is invaluable in any structure.

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It isn’t like Sargent is a striker selected in spite of a poor scoring record, either. He found himself preferred to Pukki in the starting line-up and scoring goals during the club’s best stretch early this season; a run that arguably earned him his World Cup place.

That stretch also helps validate Wagner’s claims that Sargent is destined to play primarily as a central striker — even if that assessment could lead to selection issues regarding Norwich’s Finnish legend moving forward.

In truth, all Sargent could do in the first half of this season was maximise his run-outs as a striker, particularly compared to how he fared in the Premier League.

Since dropping a level in the pyramid as Norwich was relegated again last May, Sargent has kept an identical rate of expected goals per shot (0.11). However, he has nearly doubled his number of shots per 90 minutes as a Championship player and moved his efforts a full three yards closer to goal than last season in the Premier League.

To that end, it’s no wonder that he’s faring better this year. It isn’t solely down to him playing at a lower standard.

Can/will he play with Pukki?

Farke was the first Norwich head coach to attempt to play Pukki and Sargent as a pair during the 2021-22 campaign. However, that came in almost futile circumstances.

Norwich’s pointless start to their Premier League return — they lost the first six league games — led Farke to play a 5-3-2 formation that aimed to hold onto their clean sheet from kick-off while the forward pair were asked to come up with some goal threat on their own — or at least with minimal support from elsewhere.

It rarely looked like working, and Farke was sacked in the November after the 11th league game of the season — ironically, within hours of their first top-flight win of the campaign.

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Replacement Smith had more joy playing them both in his Premier League starting XI but that was as part of a forward four that included Adam Idah as the second striker, with Sargent on the right and Kosovan winger Milot Rashica — currently on a season loan in Turkey with Galatasaray — on the left.

That 4-2-4 formation sparked Sargent’s most high-profile night in a Norwich shirt to date in a 3-0 win at fellow strugglers Watford on January 21, with his two goals brilliantly assisted by Pukki and Rashica respectively.

Rashica had also been a team-mate at Bremen but won’t be an option for Wagner this season.

Sargent’s first that night in Watford remains the only time he and Pukki have directly combined for a goal.

Kickstart your weekend with the highlights from last night ⬇️#NCFC | #WATNOR pic.twitter.com/Z4sSZURlsj

— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) January 22, 2022

A different formation?

It was Wagner’s use of a 4-3-3 formation that propelled Huddersfield to the Premier League in 2016-17, via the promotion play-offs. Since that spell however, as his career has taken him back to Germany and then to Switzerland, he has usually looked elsewhere for his team’s structure.

With Schalke, Wagner consistently played with a striker pairing in either a 4-3-1-2, 4-4-2 or 4-1-3-2 starting shape. Then last season at defending Swiss champions Young Boys, it was almost exclusively a 4-4-2 from kick-off.

In Wagner’s opening game against Blackburn on Sunday, a fluid attacking shape mostly hinged on a 4-2-2-2 formation, with Pukki and Idah as the front pairing.

Wagner acknowledged after the match that his work on the training pitch over the previous two days had mostly been on how he wanted his team to build up and progress the ball from their defensive third to the central one, and that the final-third work was still to come.

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Again, Sargent’s most productive spells this season have come with him being a central striker, chosen over Pukki to be in the starting line-up.

Goals often came from cutbacks, notably assisted by Aaron Ramsey, a 19-year-old England youth international whose season-long loan from Aston Villa of the Premier League was cut short this month through injury.

Norwich had previously been tempted to bring in wide reinforcements during the January transfer window but sporting director Stuart Webber played down the chance of making any signings this month when unveiling Wagner. So not only has Sargent lost one of his more fruitful partners, it also seems unlikely his prospects will be boosted by the arrival of a fresh face to combine with for the next four months.

Luxembourg international Danel Sinani has been another supply line but is more of a technical, creative No 10 who likes to drift and play in short combinations. Sinani did put in one excellent cross from the right wing for Sargent to head home against Huddersfield in August, however — something that Pukki struggles to offer as a striker threat and a likely avenue to goals that Wagner will look to explore, especially in a 4-4-2 shape.

That said, Norwich’s interim manager Allan Russell, who is also the club’s set-piece coach and previously, the attacking specialist coach for the England men’s team, took his chance while briefly in charge in December to address whether Pukki and Sargent could play together, as well as the best position for the latter to take up.

“Can two international players play as a two? Absolutely,” said Russell. “They’re both top-class players.

“You spoke about Josh playing on the right. If you play in a front three, these are only starting positions. A 4-4-2 can look like a 4-3-3 and vice versa in certain situations. It’s how you can have those players moving with fluidity in the top line.

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“Ultimately, getting them into the situations and areas where they thrive is the most important thing, not the actual structure or formation you (the media) see as outside people, with all due respect.”

What of the future?

Many people in football recruitment felt that despite Sargent’s undoubted potential and the likelihood he would prove a good signing for Norwich eventually, the Premier League probably came too soon for him, and his £10million ($12m) fee was unlikely to offer much room for a swift profit without top-flight success for him or his new club.

Norwich’s subsequent relegation is clearly hard to ignore but Sargent is arguably in a better position reputationally now he has shown a goalscoring touch in the Championship, as well as proving his usefulness in hold-up play as a central striker — including at the World Cup.

Sargent is contracted to Norwich until July 2025. However, if this season continues on its current trend then, come the summer, he may well be considered the club’s biggest playing asset and the one to bring in the best value if Norwich cash in.

The conditions would need to be right and Norwich would need to consider the sale of Sargent as a necessary means to funding a more widespread squad rebuild — especially as they face the possibility of a multitude of players being out of contract come the end of the season.

Equally, those players in line to become free agents in the summer include Pukki, so it could easily be the case that, come the start of next season in August, Sargent is Norwich’s main man in attack in his own right, Wagner is looking to build around him for his first full season in charge, and the Missouri native is suddenly indispensable.

If that happens, it will have owed much to Wagner finding the right formula for Sargent and his new club over the rest of this season.

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(Other contributor: Mark Carey)

(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

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