Norwich City star is among Championship's best in key area - Liam Manning must unleash him more | OneFootball

Josh Sargent may soon have greater competition for minutes at Carrow Road

Josh Sargent is, without doubt, Norwich City’s primary attacking threat.

The USMNT international netted 15 Championship goals for the Canaries last term, bettered only by the 18 scored by Borja Sainz, who has since moved on to Portuguese side Porto.

Sargent has raced off the mark again this season, making it difficult for the likes of Jovon Makama to get a look in.

However, one stat suggests that Liam Manning should be offering Makama more opportunities than he’s currently getting.

Jovon Makama is one of the Championship’s best in specific metric

Makama arrived at Norwich this summer for a reported fee of £1.2m, joining from League One outfit Lincoln City.

The 21-year-old impressed there, notching seven goals and six assists in 38 third-tier outings before making the move.

He is still young, which may be why Manning has only opted to start him once in Norwich’s first five games, but there are signs that he deserves more minutes, as he’s so far managed to net two goals in just 124 minutes of football.

That gives him a goals-per-game ratio of 1.45, which puts him second in the Championship in that metric, behind only Ellis Simms, and ahead of Haji Wright, both of Frank Lampard’s free-scoring Coventry City side.

He is currently battling it out with some of the biggest names in the division, but he does not appear to be being treated with the seniority you may expect that would offer.

It’s difficult for Liam Manning to dent Josh Sargent’s minutes

The natural next step in the thought process around Makama is that if he can register such a rate with limited game time, could he hold that level across greater minutes, therefore producing more goals?

That remains to be seen, but it is an experiment nonetheless worth conducting, and the stats suggest Manning should do so.

There is just one issue: Josh Sargent. An issue, in the sense that he is simply too good to have off the pitch for too long.

The American is already up to five league goals in just nine outings so far this season, numbers that have him on course for 20 or more goals if he keeps up his current rate.

That’s difficult for any player to disrupt, not least a developing young player like Makama, but we have already seen this season that the two can play together.

There are ways to fit Josh Sargent and Jovon Makama together

Although by trade Makama is a striker, he’s also spent a significant amount of his young career out on the right wing.

That was where he started in his singular league start against Stoke City, a game in which he scored – a crucial goal that ensured the Canaries left with a point in the 1-1 draw.

Makama split his time between centre-forward and the right last season for Lincoln, and although he made 21 appearances as a striker, scoring four goals, he had double the number of goal involvements out wide, despite starting just 11 games there.

It shows that the young Nottingham-born forward is adaptable, and with the sorts of numbers he’s putting up with the opportunities he’s getting, Manning must use that adaptability to get him on the pitch, even if that means fitting him in around Sargent.

Makama is the club’s top scorer in the Championship behind Sargent, showing that Ante Crnac and Matej Jurasek, who he’s battling for the right-wing berth, are not registering undroppable output.

With the promise that Makama has shown in the limited minutes he’s been given, it feels like he’s earning the right to see greater trust, and playing time, from Manning on the other side of the international break.