Another weekend of EFL Championship action featured the latest productive shifts from Josh Sargent and Haji Wright.
Sargent scored his 14th goal of the season despite Norwich City’s 2-1 road loss to Plymouth Argyle on Saturday. The U.S. men’s national team forward now sits third in the EFL Championship golden boot race.
Ryan Hardie’s first-half brace propelled the hosts into a 2-0 lead.
Sargent trimmed the Canaries deficit one minute into the second half, ripping a left-footed shot into the top of the net.
However, Johannes Hoff Thorup’s squad failed to find an equalizing goal, dropping points against one of the league’s strugglers.
Norwich City sits eight points out of the top-six ahead of a midweek home clash with Sunderland.
Haji Wright stays hot with latest goal
Coventry City also suffered a setback on Saturday, falling 2-1 at home to league-leading Burnley.
Haji Wright scored his 11th league goal of the season in the loss, finishing as one of the Sky Blues’ lone bright spots in the match.
Wright needed just five minutes to break the deadlock, finishing off a rebound in the box into the back of the net.
Jaidon Anthony equalized for the visiting Clarets though in the 16th minute before delivering the go-ahead goal early in the second half.
Frank Lampard’s squad failed to find an equalizing goal, falling out of the top-six with the home defeat.
Wright, who missed parts of the season through injury, looks to have rekindled his form in the attacking third.
Coventry City will remain at home midweek, seeking a bounce back win over Portsmouth.
i am genuinely curious how many more games some of you want to give the usual, struggling suspects building up to the world cup. how many consecutive tournaments do they get to hog and ruin. and some of the perseveration is just crazed.
example — sargent got nations league and yet again nothing happened. after this that and the other tournament where nothing has happened, since 20-FREAKING-19! including he got the world cup we also struggled to score in. at some point are we gonna take the patterned hint? or are we gonna keep trying this based on analytics and anglophilia until he retires?
wright has a higher strike rate per 90 same league. wright had a goal in the same world cup sargent couldn’t score in. wright scored in a friendly on a world cup semi team. wright scored 2 in the last nations league final we won. sargent gets blanked in the tournaments we suck in. do i have to draw a map?
this is not even a hard decision for sane, non-snob, non-perseverating people.
likewise, the hand-wringing over secondary players like musah is absurd. musah has almost 50 caps in an attacking position and 1G 3A. aaronson has been dropped curbside for far more than that (8G 6A in similar number of caps).
you say you’re not fanboy club snobs while pushing decisions that seem dominated by who plays where in club. guys who do nothing but score tournament goals for us get left off (ferreira, wright). guys who play for the Right Teams can go 0-fer the decade and be back next time because they have 15 goals in the english 4th division or whatever.
just a reminder. this team sputtered through the world cup. this team got shredded before copa. got shredded at copa. meh all fall with the exception of one game which hasn’t been repeated, against a team that then beat us in march. got shredded at nations league.
we should follow the normal NL-GC pattern, with a twist. the starters should be feet up in recliners getting rest as they looked tired in march. this should be a B team tourney as GC usually are. that B team for a change should have plenty of euro based — the blind spot in this team.
and then people should be playing for jobs. come show us something. if you can’t in GC you’re not helping us next year. bye til fall 26. if you do something you come back and compete with musah and all the other disappointments in the fall.
we need to quit quit quit assuming our answers before players compete. let the players play. decide based on performance and whether the team wins. quit with the analytics. quit with the club snobbery. quit with the “not enough minutes for me.”
if you’re concerned a guy isn’t fit, GC is usually a nice long camp and tournament where a guy can be run for weeks and played progressive minutes until he either is sharp and fit, or has shown he’s too lazy to be worth the time. but the US historically has been smarter than this, has understood it can use windows as a way to get their better players in lousy situations their missing time and fitness.
or we can join dortmund in a circular firing squad and i’m watching us sub on white with few caps and 1 goal when we need something or the tournament is over in last place.
NT performance. performance. performance. all the rest is bs. wake up.
here’s the deal. out of the last 5 games at 2 tournament finals we have won 1 — bolivia — who kind of sucked. if you add in jamaica quarters that’s 3 wins from 7 and none against a team ranked higher than 63rd. the idea usual suspects provide our best chance to win is laughably self refuting.
the standard response at this point is to start dissing the talent. i don’t think anyone doing that has looked at panama or canada’s rosters. on paper we should be the best team in the region, by far. we are instead, by results, roughly around the neighborhood of CR and jamaica for 4th or 5th — behind MX CAN PAN — which isn’t much movement from 2018, really, particularly given the massive talent shift since then. we can’t even beat TnT consistently, even after couva. if there’s one thing you’d think’d get fixed.
at which point, sorry, it’s not talent, it’s tactics and selection. i routinely watch journeyman panama x and o us off the pitch. we insist on crap tactics because we have to be “like europe” even though we mean 2010 europe and europe itself has moved on to playing other ways — some of them much more defensive and direct.
and we seem stuck on a unit of guys since about 2020 who showed they were about to own the world by tying wales 0-0 in a dreary covid friendly. we are stuck on silly debates about who plays where and how much they scored this season, and not who the best players for a scheme are.
you then watch canada or panama play and the reason we lose is those teams are basically coaching pawns out there to do something specific to thwart us, well, for 90.
when we figure out tactics are not a device to show off or befriend our way into The Club, but a means to winning games, that will help. when we decide our tactics might be based around bottling up opponents, that might help. when we decide “who gives us the best chance to win” is not a snob question but based on previous wins, losses, and goals in the US shirt, that might help.
no, i clearly remember the bradley haters saying as we made the 2009 confed cup final, and into the 2010 knockouts, where we might have done something except for bob’s “rico clark”……..was that they would rather lose games and not qualify than play how we used to.
they have gotten their wish IMO.
if one judges tactics by results, our best results remain back in the Bad Old Days of 2002 and 2010. the fake narrative is of a crude, defensive team progressively learning to be prettier and better. in reality, many of the non-qualifying pre-1990 teams were fairly naively attacking. even 1990 was a little soft. if you go back and watch old NASL, not a lot of team defense was played.
1994 was we’re sick of losing and we’re gonna play athletic, defense first soccer. that reached its peak in the 2002 and 2010 counter teams. those teams got a fair amount of results.
the talent and skill level has gone up, but the tactics aren’t much more effective than watching some 1980 NASL team advance the ball by an endless sequence of guy shows back to the ball, pass him the ball after he shows back 10 yards, he turns, looks for the next guy to barely move it forward. bout as effective as trying to score goals by passing the ball around the back.
more i think about it, we attack by passing the ball around the back, and defend by having forwards chase people. sounds backwards, eh?
P. Aaronson playing at the 10 today. Has an assist.
Diego Luna with two goals yesterday playing in a more support striker role/10 in a two striker set up for RSL yesterday.
He passed it at midfield and his teammate dribbled and then hit a “golazo” from like 35 yards. So yes an assist but … he didn’t have much to do with it.
Sebastian Berhalter has been very good for Vancouver this season. Just sayin.
Normally I would agree. But if panic is in charge and assuming all hands are on deck for the Gold Cup then experimentation is out the window.
If all the usual A team suspects show up, based on the NL, they will need to show they can play together better than that cluster fuck. That includes his brother who would, I think, be slotted in front of Paxton.
So why should Paxton get a look? You mention his versatility but we have a lot of attackers who need a look ahead of Paxton including Flo, Dest, Malik, Luna, and Patrick. And Dom Dwyer and Cole Campbell just so IV does not have a cow.
no, you’re basically saying we can’t react while the team struggles horribly or you get to call that reaction panic. i’ve been watching this group, with some exceptions, struggle for 5 years and get a coach fired already. put on some of the most abject performances in the shirt i have seen. over and over. that’s not panic. that’s good sense.
you leave off the stars so you can evaluate and they can rest. you either go completely experimental so those players get plenty of minutes to show something and establish a performance pattern we can like or dislike. and then go with your gut for who is ready to be “A” in september. i prefer this as i think we need a heavy refresh and liberation from the usual suspect problem.
or
you put the disappointments and the leading prospects in a camp thunderdome style, and they fight to the end, no playing favorites, for which ones get put back with the A team in september.
if this looks too much like the usual suspects i am going to start writing 2026 off. we might even get out of group in a 48 team diluted event.
but i think this has actually regressed from 2022 at this point. the offense is meh and stuck in crossing mode. the defense commits giveaways and ships 1-2 goals every night. there was some grit and then it’s gone. there was a brief spark of something direct and then back to passing around the back and hoofing it into the box to the wrong type forwards to even finish it.
if i see a lot of the same people who’ve been embarrassing us all cycle, poch is as bad a snob as y’all are and this is doomed.
Tillman back among the goal scorers. Playing as a 10.
When he was coming up with Bayern in one interview I remember one of his coaches there said his best position was striker.
You can never have too many guys who like to score goals.
They said that about Green though too and he’s now playing DM.
JR
Green took a while to get to the DM position.
Didn’t Pochettino have Malik replace Johnny in a game early on?
I can see Malik doing well as a Michael Carrick type #6. More about deep lying playmaking than defending though. Malik will tell you he patterned himself after Paul Pogba who was not a deep lying #6 but did have his best success in more deep lying roles.
Malik seems to have all the talent in the world. He just needs to figure out how best to use it.
Almost all of Malik’s appearances for Bayern at CF were before his ACL injury. Now he only played about a half season with them upon his return, but neither PSV or Rangers have played him at CF since he left Munich.
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His defensive work rate has tended to be the question, both at Rangers and PSV he hasn’t been asked to do a lot of defending. That’s where I could see move to a high mid table in another league could be helpful RBL, Brighton, Roma, a spot like that where he’ll have a lot of the ball but if he doesn’t defend his team will be punished.
Musah yanked 25 minutes in. I have to say Musah is very much struggling right now. I think it’s a possibility P.Aaronson should get a look for the Gold Cup team. Musah may be left off. Out of all CM’s he is the one not in great form.
P. Aaronson can also play many attacking positions.
Normally I would agree. But if panic is in charge and assuming all hands are on deck for the Gold Cup then experimentation is out the window.
If all the usual A team suspects show up, based on the NL, they will need to show they can play together better than that cluster fuck. That includes his brother who would, I think, be slotted in front of Paxton.
So why should Paxton get a look? You mention his versatility but we have a lot of attackers who need a look ahead of Paxton including Flo, Dest, Malik, Luna, and Patrick. And Dom Dwyer and Cole Campbell just so IV does not have a cow.
Because he has been outstanding for Utrecht this season. Musah with current form is droppable IMO. Paxten deserves a long look.
And what many players deserve a look? Luna has been in, Tillman has been in, Flo has been a regular. Cole Campbell isn’t even a first team player.
“And what many players deserve a look? Luna has been in, Tillman has been in, Flo has been a regular. Cole Campbell isn’t even a first team player.”
I don’t believe in bringing any of the A team to the Gold Cup. But the consensus on SBI seems to be that this is Pochettino’s the last chance for for a full fledged A team dress rehearsal.
If so, then do it right. That means only call in guys you are 99 % sure are going to be on the WC roster and play them together in a way that they would realistically be used in the World Cup not handing out 20 minute garbage time cameos to Paxton Cole, Cole Campbell, Dom Dwyer, Duane Holmes and Paxton.
In other words play Flo, Josh, Haji and Malik (or Gio) a lot and bring in Diego and Patrick at halftime and see how they work with those guys and Dest. I don’t expect to see Jedi regardless. And I’m not a Brenden fan but apparently everyone else is and he’ll get in ahead of Paxton.
BA represents the USMNT fan ideal that running all day until you drop dead can somehow make up for a lack of skill. I think that idea originally developed from watching Frankie Hejduk electrify the team.
But BA is not even in the same zip code as Frankie. Paxton seems like he’s more productive than BA but a lack of production (goals and assists) from BA never stopped those run all day BA fans.
Based on the NL, where they could not do even basic things, the A team need to play this straight, show that they have balls and dominate which they are theoretically capable of.
In June there are the Turkiye and Swiss friendlies prior to the Gold Cup and if Paxton, Dom Dwyer, Cole Campbell, Duane Holmes and Julian Green get called up then and make their cases, then that would make more sense.
Musah did not have a good Nations League, and he was dreadful today. Had to be consoled by the coach after he got yanked. He was directly responsible for both goals they gave up.
They didn’t mention in NL that I heard but that was during Ramadan and in the past Yunus has participated in fasting. With the early kickoffs in NL he would have been playing without eating since before sunrise. Ramadan ended last week though so not sure the problem today.