It’s safe to assume that the great majority of Canaries fans were not familiar with the young Spaniard when he was first being connected to a move to Norwich City near the close of the 2022–2023 season.
However, he seized the chance that Norfolk offered, displaying numerous moments of excellence throughout the previous season before improving and emerging as one of the Championship’s most notable players in 2024–25, if not the most notable.
In recent years, Norwich has established a solid reputation for cleaning raw diamonds and then reselling them for a profit. It served as a pillar during Stuart Webber’s tenure as sporting director and occasionally brought him high accolades. Player trade is still a key component of the club’s strategy, even though their financial status is more precarious now than it was when they were bouncing back and forth between the Premier League.
Sainz’s influence at Norwich suggests that he will eventually bring in a sizable sum of money for City and current sporting director Ben Knapper. He might, however, inspire something much more worthwhile before that occurs: a return to the Premier League.
After Giresunspor, a Turkish club, was relegated from the Süper Lig in 2023, Sainz joined Norwich on a free transfer. Despite not being a well-known name in England, Norwich supporters were pleased with what they discovered when they looked into the connections.
The spectators instantly warmed up to Sainz, a self-assured left-winger who could beat his opponent, show off his ingenuity, and score (amazing) goals. When the trade was finalised, there was so much excitement surrounding it that Norwich acknowledged in their official statement that it was “a surprise to absolutely nobody.”
It was a victory for Norwich. Sainz had been mentioned as a possible target by some of the larger Turkish clubs, and following a successful season—at least on an individual basis—a return to Spain wasn’t completely out of the question.
After all, Sainz had played for Deportivo Alavés for two seasons in La Liga, making 40 games in Spain’s top division. He had also been a highly rated adolescent who had represented his country up to the Under-19 level.
However, Norwich convinced him to relocate to Carrow Road, and now, from both sides’ points of view, the agreement is a brilliant one. Sainz has played a lot of football, and the team soon realised how much promise he had. As he has grown, he has become a decisive attacker who has the ability to virtually single-handedly influence the Canaries’ goals.
Nevertheless, Sainz has undoubtedly reached a new level in 2024–25, even though he had encouraging performances the previous season following an injury-plagued start at Norwich. The most noteworthy aspect is that, with 11 goals in the first 15 matchdays, he leads the Championship in scoring.
That’s already two more than Sainz has ever managed in a league season in senior football and five more than he scored in 35 Championship matches the previous season. Regardless of how you look at it, it’s a great start to the season, made even more so by the fact that he isn’t a true center-forward.
However, as any consistent Norwich or Championship fan can tell you, Sainz’s goals aren’t the only thing drawing attention; their calibre is also a factor.
In May, Norwich’s social media staff might decide to launch a “Goal of the Season” competition that only includes Sainz’s goals, with a different category for everyone else.
Sincerely, it’s difficult to find a guy with more goals this season at any level of European professional football than Sainz.
Then there was the incredible dipping screamer against Cardiff; perhaps an even more forceful long-range goal to open the scoring at home against Middlesbrough; a little later in the same game, he picked out the top-right corner again with a curler from a challenging angle as Norwich rallied from a 3-1 deficit to draw 3-3; and the obscene lob in the thrashing of Hull at Carrow Road.
Therefore, it may not be shocking that Sainz’s 11 goals are based on 5.7 expected goals (xG). Only two players in English football’s top four divisions have outperformed their xG by more than Sainz (5.3). Edo Kayembe of Watford ranks second highest xG overperformance in the Championship alone with a score of 2.9, just over halfway to Sainz’s 5.3 (one of Kayembe’s goals came straight from a corner).
This raises some clear-cut queries: Is this form sustainable? When the statistics even out, will he have a losing run?
It’s possible that he will. However, that doesn’t lessen the need to celebrate his form and progress; on the contrary, it should serve as a reminder of how outstanding he has been in the first few months of the 2024–25 season.
Sainz’s 55 shots in 2023–24, for example, were valued at 4.9 xG. In 2024–25, he has already surpassed that xG total, even though he made 11 fewer attempts.
Therefore, even if it’s reasonable to assume that he might not sustain his present goal-scoring pace for the whole of the season, it’s still reasonable to claim that he has improved significantly this season in terms of his positioning and awareness in the final third.
In addition to firing more frequently, his shots’ average xG value has gone from 0.09 to 0.13. In isolation, that might not seem like much, but it adds up to a 44.4% increase in the average shot xG value.
Therefore, Sainz is generally photographing from more hazardous situations. His shot maps spanning 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 provide a clear illustration of the argument.
The management change is undoubtedly one of the most significant changes, and it hasn’t only affected Sainz. After failing to secure promotion at the end of the previous season, David Wagner was fired, and Johannes Hoff Thorup was brought in from relative obscurity after managing FC Nordsjaelland in his home country of Denmark for almost a year and a half.
By the end of his tenure, Norwich’s supporters frequently complained that the team had a clear identity, despite Wagner’s desire for them to play “intensive, aggressive football where you are brave and chase opponents.”
There are indications that Thorup has attempted to put more emphasis on possession. Their average possession percentage, for instance, increased from 48.7% to 56.5%, and their passes per game increased from 452.1 to 532.3, which is the second-highest in the Championship this season.
One consequence of Norwich’s increased control is that Sainz is able to operate nearer to locations where he poses a greater threat.
He is therefore touching the ball significantly more frequently in the attacking third and far less frequently in his own half. Sainz is having more or less touches in each part of the pitch, as indicated by the touch zones map below.
Sainz’s increased shot frequency and the notable rise in his average shot xG value are better understood in light of the fact that he is logging two more touches in the opposition’s penalty area every ninety minutes.
But it’s not as simple as “more touches in attacking third is good.”
Sainz’s propensity to keep racing into the box after cutting in from the left flank and offloading to a teammate is a characteristic of his game that existed before he moved to Norwich.
However, those runs now seem to have an even higher sense of urgency and drive. More often than not, he finds dangerous gaps to take advantage of as he moves farther into the box.
He’s been involved in eight passing sequences where he’s both had the shot and participated in build-up, which is the third most in the Championship this season and already two more than in the whole previous season, suggesting that even more consideration is being given to where he should be after passing.
Two of them have resulted in goals, such as the one he scored against Preston North End after first finding Anis Ben Slimane and then deflecting a cross from Kellen Fisher home after just two passes.
However, this off-ball mindset isn’t limited to scenes where Sainz has been the shooter or participated. Considering that he only managed one shot within the six-yard box last season, the fact that he has scored three of his goals from inside the box (and another from around a yard out) drives home the argument. In a similar vein, Sainz is only five passes short of his 2023–24 total after already receiving 20 passes played into the box.
His relationship with Josh Sargent on the pitch has undoubtedly contributed. The American, whose recent injury absence has coincided with Norwich losing three straight, has set up three of those four close-range goals.
Up front, Sargent is a huge miss. Not so much because he finishes goals frequently, but he puts in a lot of effort, gets along well with teammates, and is a really well-rounded Championship player. Although he can cover several defenders on his own, teams can concentrate more on Sainz when he is not present.
The fact that Sainz only managed one shot each against Sheffield Wednesday and Bristol City in Norwich’s last two games may not come as a huge surprise.
The Championship is so cruel that Norwich, who had a strong start to the season, has fallen to 14th place after going six games without a victory. However, key players are starting to recover from their injury crisis, and in a league like this, things can change drastically in an instant.
Fans might hope their star player will stay a little while longer because Norwich majority stakeholder Mark Attanasio is adamant the team “doesn’t need to sell Borja in January” and sports director Knapper announced talks regarding a new deal for Sainz are moving forward.
Although the Premier League may seem like a far-off dream right now, Sainz makes the impossibly possible.
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