Christian Pulisic and Haji Wright have both enjoyed impressive first campaigns with their new clubs and that trend continued Saturday in Italy and England respectively.
Pulisic scored the opening goal for AC Milan on Saturday in a 3-0 Serie A victory over Lecce. It marked Pulisic’s 10th goal of the season in league play and his 14th for the Rossoneri across all competitions.
The U.S. men’s national team attacker drilled a left-footed shot into the far corner after six minutes, giving AC Milan a 1-0 advantage.
Olivier Giroud and Rafael Leao also added goals of their own to pad the Rossoneri’s eventual victory. The 25-year-old Pulisic played 62 minutes in the match, winning three duels, making two tackles, and two recoveries.
Pulisic has excelled in his debut Serie A campaign and AC Milan has certainly benefited from his production.
Second-place AC Milan sits 11 points behind rivals Inter in the league standings.
Haji Wright scores in Coventry’s crucial win over Leeds United
Coventry City’s quest to reach the EFL Championship promotion playoffs received another major boost on Saturday.
Haji Wright scored the second goal for the Sky Blues in a 2-1 victory over Leeds United. The result moved Mark Robins’ squad four points back of Norwich City for sixth place in the league table.
After Ellis Simms opened the scoring for Coventry City, Wright doubled the hosts lead four minutes in the second half. His right-footed finish off of a Josh Eccles fast break pass doubled Coventry’s lead over the visiting Lilywhites.
Wright played 89 minutes in the match, winning four duels and completing a match-high three dribbles.
The 26-year-old now has 15 league goals for the Sky Blues in his debut English campaign.
Cole Campbell scores for Dortmund U19, they clinched a playoff spot in the A-Junior Bundesliga with 5 weeks left. I couldn’t find it on YouTube anywhere but DFB will release weekly highlight show with all the goals later this week. I don’t think he’ll get to the first team this year but wouldn’t be surprised if he’s with them during training camp this summer. That might prohibit him from U20 WC qualifiers in July.
Did any get up and watch Milan? Apparently Pulisic played as a #10. Read a report that he looked a little rusty playing in the center but overall did well.
Yeah he was the 10. Did well pushing the game and defending. Definitely a position he has stated multiple times is his favorite position. Will be interesting if it continues especially since Chukweze is looking good at RW. Musah looked good spelling Pulisic in that position too.
Only watched the first half, but Pulisic was very good. Came close to a second goal, with a nice head ball that was right at the keeper. Played with lot of confidence. The difference between the Milan Pulisic and the Chelsea Pulisic is remarkable.
Haji now has 15 goals, Sargent 14. Haji’s tied for fifth in the Championship, Sargent is tied for seventh…with Jamie Vardy. At the torrid rate those two are scoring at now, they could well end the season even higher, and one way or another you have to think both guys will be in the Prem next season.
Pulisic is tied for 9th in Serie A. He has the same number of goals as Romelu Lukaku.
It might be time to revise how we think about our player pool a bit.
EPL doesn’t shop for attackers in The Championship. If Norwich or Coventry go up one will be there. I will be shocked if both are there. Last years top goal scorers
Akpom: 28g sold to Ajax
Gyokeres: 21g sold to Sporting
Morris: 20g promoted with Luton
Piroe: 19g sold to Leeds
Tella: 17g sold to Leverkusen
Of the guys that scored more than Sargent’s 13g last season only Brereton-Diaz who ended his loan and went back Villarreal and then was loaned to Sheffield United and Amad Diallo who ended his loan and went back to Man U are in the EPL (4 appearances) 3 of the top 5 ended up with good clubs playing European competitions but not the EPL (Morris with Luton not included).
Interesting…as ever, your pro-league knowledge is encyclopedic. I have no idea how you keep up with all that.
If Sargent and Haji were to wind up at clubs like the most of those I’d still absolutely take it, and I’m sure they likely would too. But I do think they’re looking at some upgrades in their futures.
Another random fascinating part, at least to me, is how much more highly everyone regards the Championship than MLS, even though on a monetary basis the two leagues are increasingly far more even. But it does seem like a guy who scores goals in MLS can slot right into the Championship and start scoring there too.
Q: not great memory just good research skills. I went and looked the two previous years as well and only Emiliano Buendia. He was sold to Aston Villa after a 15g season in 2020/21 but he did have a season in EPL and one in LaLiga before that. I think EPL clubs want a little more proof of concept so they are going to go sign guys that have done it in the Championship and Netherlands or German or Spain.
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I think that salary similarity is why you don’t see more MLSers move to The Championship. A guy like Jesus Ferreira would take a paycut and if you often have to still go another step to Portugal or Belgium anyway, why not just start there. With just a cursory look at salaries between MLS and The Championship it looks like MLS is still buoyed by DPs at the top and then the bottom doesn’t make much. In The Championship the top players do make more but the disparity between #1 and #20 is smaller.
“It might be time to revise how we think about our player pool a bit.”
Premature.
Josh and Hadji have been awesome. And it would not shock me if they wound up on some EPL side . But if that did not happen it wouldn’t shock me either.
EPL teams like young and cheap. And Championship players cost EPL teams more because there is a premium attached to the fact that playing in the Championship supposedly means they are already acclimated to what it will be like in the EPL. They are already used to listening to something resembling English, and the culture of the UK. Norwich, for example, were only recently relegated in 2021-22.
Like everyone, EPL teams think sell on value and how they fit into their overall player pool.
Josh and Hadji are not old but they aren’t exactly young either. And I doubt they will be as cheap as some teams would want. And if either Norwich or Coventry goes up they would almost certainly want to try to hang on to their goal scorers.
You may remember a guy name Ivan Toney. In the 2020-21, when he was 24-25, he scored 31 goals in the Championship for Brentford ( I think that is still a record) and they went up. You’d think some big team in the EPL would want him but he’s still at Brentford. I think that if he had been 21-22 at the time he would have been gone.
Here on SBI we focus on the UK because our media coverage is slanted that way. Something about people who speak English. But there is a lot of talent out there that people on SBI don’t hear as much about.
As a fan all I care about is productivity but these teams see the players as commodities that fit into an overall picture . And we generally don’t get to see how the overall picture looks for them.
Toney’s gambling ban probably kept some teams away.
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Haji spells his name Haji, no “d”.
JR,
I thought about that but the ban first public in Nov-Dec. of 2022. By then Brentford were in the season after their promotion. So you’d think anyone impressed by his efforts in the Championship would have already bought him before the scandal.
Now it is possible there were rumours ahead of time. Or maybe people were put off by the fact that his production dropped ( only 12 goals) in that first season back. I don’t know.
If so then I notice that Newcastle didn’t get the memo and apparently failed to do their research when they bought Tonali from Milan only to lose him to a gambling ban.
Toney is a better forward with more of a track record than either Josh or Hadji ( I’ve seen it spelled both ways.) but again, other than his raw numbers, I’m not familiar with his idiosyncrasies.
I’d love to see our dynamic duo get picked up by really big teams and thrive but the competition for striker is really, really fierce in the EPL.
V: I think Brentford were waiting until January window, he had some rumors of big club interest in the summer but no valuations that Brentford agreed with. His first season in EPL was only 12g so they wanted a little more proof that he could replicate. Then the charges came in November so no one was going to buy because he was going to miss at least the rest of the season.
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The word hadji can be spelled in multiple ways to mean someone who has completed the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. However, Haji Wright spells it Haji if you’ve seen it with a “d” those people are wrong. His personal Twitter has it Haji. As do US Soccer and Coventry City official pages.
JR
If you were going to be impressed by a Championship striker’s production Toney was the guy to impress you. Our dynamic duo could each theoretically hit 31 goals in the time left but that’s asking a lot.
Ivan and I don’t hang out so maybe he’s a dick and a clubhouse cancer. I don’t know, The point is there are a lot of variables that are involved in spending big money on strikers ( or any player) and goal production , while important, is just one of them.
JR
If you were going to be impressed by a Championship striker’s production Toney was the guy to impress you. Our dynamic duo could each theoretically hit 31 goals in the time left but that’s asking a lot.
Ivan and I don’t hang out so maybe he’s a dick and a clubhouse cancer. I don’t know, The point is there are a lot of variables that are involved in spending big money on strikers ( or any player) and goal production , while important, is just one of them.