Josh Sargent and Brenden Aaronson both walked away with goals in Saturday’s EFL Championship action.
Sargent scored the winning goal for Norwich City on Saturday as the Canaries defeated visiting West Bromwich Albion 1-0 at Carrow Road. The American striker now has 13 league goals this season and nine in his last 11 appearances for the club.
While it looked like both the Canaries and Baggies would depart with one point apiece, Sargent had the last laugh. After being played upfield on a counter attack, Sargent raced into the 18-yard before cutting onto his right foot and drilling a low shot into the corner.
Norwich City would hang on for a full three points, moving into 10th place in the league table.
“It was a difficult game,” Sargent said postmatch in a club interview. “Not a lot of chances, but it was probably the best way we could end the game. So we’re very happy with that.
“You’ve got to wait for that next opportunity,” he added. “There are a lot of games where you don’t get that opportunity or a lot of chances, but you’ve got to wait for that moment. And today, I did that.”
A six-match April schedule begins for the Canaries at Plymouth Argyle on April 5.
Brenden Aaronson breaks goalscoring drought for Leeds United
Brenden Aaronson didn’t let being excluded from March U.S. men’s national team duty stop him from ending his goalscoring drought on Saturday.
Aaronson scored Leeds United’s opening goal in a 2-2 home draw with Swansea City at Elland Road. The USMNT midfielder now has nine league goals this season after netting his first since February 1.
It was a fast start for Leeds United as Aaronson bundled home a loose ball in the box after only one minute. The midfielder played a key role in the build up play before capping the play off.
Swansea City would peg Leeds United back twice in the match with Harry Darling and Zan Vipotnik netting for the visitors.
Aaronson played 73 minutes in the match.
Leeds United dropped to second place following its draw and Sheffield United’s victory on Friday. Daniel Farke’s men return to action on April 5 at Luton Town.
2tone,
So?
“US players arenât good breaking teams down with possession ”
That’s been true for much of the USMNT’s history.
In fact, that’s true of the game in general.
That all around center forward who could play a variety of styles and roles and still score goals at the rate a Haaland does is very rare, anywhere. There are many who say Haaland is just like Josh only better and a lot more productive and expensive.
At Werder Bremen they used Josh in a variety of ways. At Norwich, they made him Pukki’s understudy and when Pukki left for Minnesota, Josh took over ,focusing just on scoring.
The USMNT is lucky to have Josh in the mix.
If all you do is watch highlights or clips of players you will not have the whole picture of said players game. He wasn’t very good until scoring the goal. And as I have said before the US players aren’t good breaking teams down with possession all of our attackers are best in quick transition counters. And that includes Sargent.
2tone,
So?
“US players arenât good breaking teams down with possession ”
That’s been true for much of the USMNT’s history.
In fact, that’s true of the game in general.
That all around center forward who could play a variety of styles and roles and still score goals at the rate a Haaland does is very rare, anywhere. There are many who say Haaland is just like Josh only better and a lot more productive and expensive.
At Werder Bremen they used Josh in a variety of ways. At Norwich, they made him Pukki’s understudy and when Pukki left for Minnesota, Josh took over ,focusing just on scoring.
The USMNT is lucky to have Josh in the mix.
2tone: Except all of our guys are also really crummy at fundamental defense. So to sit back and absorb doesnât really work for us either. Both Canada goals we had our defensive lines in position, we had our back four we had our four midfielders, we just still were so unsound we lost players both times. CCV took a knee for gosh sakes in the middle of the play. âYou know what guys theyâve got the ball 8 yds from goal, I think Iâll just take a little break here for a second.â We are so slow to react we canât win 50/50 balls that weâd need to start a quick counter. Of course there isnât a team in the world that isnât better in transition than they are at beating a low or even well organized mid-block but that doesnât mean weâd be any better trying to play like Panama. The US are slow of thought and lack creativity or belief. We either donât see where to make the run or hesitate to pass to the runner until itâs too late. If we tried to play in transition full time youâd see plenty of Reyna dribbling 70 yds dumping to Pefok who wouldnât see the return pass and sky the finish into the stands because they all overthink everything. And yes Iâm still annoyed and probably a little biased based on their performance last week.
You see Sargent do stuff like this and you wonder where this guy goes when he puts on a USMNT shirt.
There’s no doubt the talent’s there. It just doesn’t seem to translate and I have zero clue why.
Maybe, just maybe he gets better service at his club. He was set up by a great pass and then he outran the defenders, which is good to see. He played pretty much centrally in the Nation’s League game. And the team mostly played a deliberate offense against Panama. BTW, while many want to put down Aaronson, 9 goals by a midfielder is pretty good.
Nearly all of BAâs goals have come against the bottom-half teams of the championship. Post-match reviews after yesterdayâs game gave him a 5 or 6: credit for scoring a scrappy goal, but criticism for constantly giving the ball away and giving away free kicks.
DC Josh: FotMob 7.5, SofaScore 7.20, Whoscored 7.15. Almost like humans have biases that affect how they rate players. All three computer ratings had him as one of the top 4 players on the pitch among both teams. You could also look at it as half his goals were scored against teams with a chance at promotion. You could say the same about Haji or Josh in terms of who they score their goals against. If you look at Pulisicâs Serie A goals heâs got one against Inter and rest against the Veneziaâs Comoâs and Lecceâs of the league, in CL itâs one against Liverpool and then Bratislava, Zagreb and Brugge not the murderâs row of the CL league. All our players are flawed in someway or another thatâs why we kind of stink at the moment.
Norwich is a different team from the USMNT.
Different players, different manager, different defenders.
Josh looked good for the USMNT early on and had a very nice finish for the offside goal. Weah being offside was not his fault. As far as I could see he looked pretty much like the Josh I see at Norwich.
But Norwich know how to use him and have done it a million times.
How many games has Josh played with the guys in that particular NL team?
I don’t know why anyone is shocked that a striker, who is hot with his team, goes to a new and different team and does not score immediately .
For any player, going to a new team is always a risk. Josh may never work out for the USMNT. There’s a reason why scorers are so highly valued.
It’s very hard to do.