Haji Wright left several scoring chances on the table in his last match for Coventry City, but rebounded in a big way on Saturday afternoon.
Wright registered his first brace for the Sky Blues in a 3-2 road defeat at Preston North End, which marked his first multi-goal performance since April 19. The U.S. men’s national team forward now has four goals for the Sky Blues following his summer arrival from Turkish club Antalyaspor.
Wright’s close-range finish in the 34th minute boosted Mark Robins’ squad in front 1-0 at Deepdale.
https://x.com/QJTXSJT10/status/1720828373969309696?s=20
Fellow American Duane Holmes equalized for Preston just four minutes later, drilling a low shot into the bottom-left corner for a 1-1 scoreline.
Alan Browne’s penalty-kick goal paired with Milutin Osmajic’s second-half header boosted Preston into a 3-1 lead with just under 20 minutes to play.
Wright’s left-footed strike in the 83rd minute cut the Coventry deficit to 3-2 and gave the Sky Blues a lifeline. However, it was the closest that the visitors would get to a full comeback on the road.
The 25-year-old was under scrutiny after missing three offensive chances in Monday’s 2-0 home loss to West Bromwich Albion, and although Coventry City’s losing run continued Saturday, fans should be excited about his individual outing this weekend.
“I figure once we fix everything up, it’s not like we’re being dominated in all these games that we’re losing. It’s small margins, and we’re losing by one, two goals,” Wright said postmatch.
“Then every game we’ve lost we’ve been in the game, hopefully once the tide turns we’ll start picking up wins and everything will change,” he added.
Coventry are only five points clear of the relegation zone and next hosts Stoke City in EFL Championship play on Nov. 11.
basic process 1. here is the deal. y’all can tear down everyone you want — it seems some people’s absurd white-black oppositional joy — but narrowing the roster down to 2 strikers for a world cup is a really bad idea. anyone who remembers what happened to jozy (or how it led to wondo being out there to miss a sitter) should know better. we also have had routine injury problems. you like balogun or pepi, fine. that’s 2. you need 3. and usually when you need 3 you try more like 5 or 6. both to compete for the 3rd slot and as contingencies if we have to work down the pecking order. i would think wright as a former world cup goal scorer is in that conversation. period.
just like it’s crazy to have 2 keepers on a roster, same team (and perhaps not even playing, if today marks a shift…..), not call 3, not play more than 2.
basic process 2. proof of concept. that if you don’t want another potential wondo as the contingency, we run potential thirds/injury options through a performance gauntlet where they have to score NT goals consistently too. as in, they see the field in meaningful games and have to produce.
Fun fact: Lenny Maloney had the same amount of touches in his 90 minutes as Haji and their completed passes was only 12/20 to 8/16 (Wright). I don’t have any context of how the Heidenheim game was played but 30 touches by a DM over 90 minutes seems really low.
fun fact, to read your post, you’d think stuttgart won, and you’d be wrong. lower possession, lower accuracy and yet heidenheim won. hmmm. they beat the 3rd place B.1 team in an upset. but we need to rerun it and tell them to play different.
also, and this is a general beef i have with the “form” folks, you already watched maloney play, did he strike you as lazy showing to the ball? as wasteful of the ball?
“not an attacking threat at all”
Being “threatening” , like big time tough talk, that wins you nothing. Actually scoring does.
” His game was nothing dynamic, vibrant or skill full, which are all traits he needs in order to be in the conversation for the USMNT (He was just on the end of two ricochet shots from his teammates).”
The USMNT is in no position to turn up their nose at people who produce. Beggars can’t be choosers. Scoring goals is the single hardest and the single most important thing to do in this game.
So you can be as un-dynamic, un- vibrant and un-skilful as you want, but score like Haji does and that demands attention.
If he’s not in the conversation then people are stupid.
Haji’s a poacher, especially in a two striker setup like Coventry used he won’t see much of the ball but he finished the opportunities he had. Chicharito has made a career out of being in the Wright place at the Wright time.
JR
People have accused Chicharito of having no skill for his entire career.
He has 195 goals for his clubs and 52 for El Tri. The USMNT could have used such an unskilled poacher.
You remind me of what Cruyff said about another un-dynamic, un- vibrant and un-skilful poacher:
“Look, the thing about [Filippo] Inzaghi is he can’t actually play football at all. He’s just always in the right position.”
For those not familiar with him:
“Inzaghi … spent the most notable spells of his club career with Juventus and AC Milan, winning two UEFA Champions League titles (2003, 2007), and three Serie A titles (1998, 2004, 2011). He is the seventh highest scorer in Italy, with 313 goals scored in official matches. He is currently the sixth-highest goal scorer in European club competitions with 70 goals, behind only Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski, Raúl and Karim Benzema. He is also Milan’s top international goal scorer in the club’s history with 43 goals. He also holds the record for most hat-tricks in Serie A with 10……At international level, Inzaghi earned 57 caps for the Italy national team between 1997 and 2007, scoring 25 goals. He represented his country at three FIFA World Cups, winning the 2006 edition, and he also took part at UEFA Euro 2000, where he won a runners-up medal.”
Not bad for a guy who can’t actually play football.
I don’t love Haji. He’s not in the same zip code as Hernandez and Inzaghi but he can be effective.
I’m just tired of the snobbish devaluing of players who can actually score goals just because they aren’t sexy and pretty.
The USMNT has never been so lethal that they can ever afford to not look at someone who is scoring regularly.
One injury away from needing a backup to the starter. Two injuries away from being right back where we were in Qatar.
I don’t know if Haji is strictly a poacher. When you go back and look at several of his goals scored in Turkey the last 2 seasons there evidence to suggest the opposite actually
Yup. Especially when that dude can also be a towering and immovable target man and can bully and bang in the box and offers additional value that way, there’s real value in a poacher who can finish.
Would I prefer a guy like Balogun who has the strength to hold it up and lay it off, spin, turn on the jets, actually has the raw pace to catch up to the run of play, receive the ball a second time…and then has the vision and timing to square it inside or the skill to juke his guy out of his shorts and then finish by blowing out the back of the net? (If you think I’m making things up, watch that first goal against Ghana…we have never had a striker like that before, ever.)
Absolutely I would. So would anybody. But we have one Balogun and unless the Soccer Gods – and an oblivious Garrett Southgate – deign to smile upon us a second time and gift us another such, we likely won’t be getting another for awhile. So we’ll need complementary, capable pieces around him.
Wright has flashed plenty of tools he might grow into that…and he’s now scoring goals in the Championship. I always regarded him as a top-of-the-Championship/bottom-of-the-Prem caliber player – I think he’s a little better than Daryl Dike – and that definitely ain’t nothin’.
That would seem to be guy who might well be able to help us in the future, for sure.
Also, big strikers tend to peak later than the speed guys. Their game is never about speed, it’s about positioning, intelligent movement, the ability to read the flow of play – and that improves with age, not diminishes, which is why you see huge strikers like Zlatan and Drogba and Giroud and now Harry Kane getting better and better after 30 and are often still kicking well after 35. (I think Pepi is going to be another one who hasn’t nearly peaked yet, and he’s got even more upside than Wright, IMHO.)
Wright and Duane Holmes scoring that first goal for either side in this Coventry City vs Preston North End face-off.
Haji Wright though was not an attacking threat at all in this match regardless of his brace. His game was nothing dynamic, vibrant or skill full, which are all traits he needs in order to be in the conversation for the USMNT (He was just on the end of two ricochet shots from his teammates).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71E2FJfqMZ0
Ever hear of Alan Shearer?” I doubt you would have played him since he wasn’t dynamic, vibrant or particularly skillful. All he did was score goals.
Shearer was very skilled but mostly he was all about power.
I remember him playing for England against the USMNT; it was like boys vs men.
He tends to score in bunches, so maybe he can go on a run for a while and light it up.