Recent Norwich City reveal may suggest Josh Sargent has Carrow Road future | OneFootball

Giving Josh Sargent the iconic number 9 shirt for the 2025-26 season indicates that the striker figures in Liam Manning's plans for the coming season.

Norwich City have once again given the iconic No.9 shirt to Josh Sargent for 2025-26, indicating that the striker very much figures in Liam Manning's plans for the new season.

With considerable speculation concerning his future with Norwich, striker Josh Sargent will be retaining his shirt for the 2025-26 season.

With Johannes Hoff Thorup having been replaced by the former Bristol City manager Manning, work is afoot to improve their fortunes following a disappointing 13th-place finish in the 2024-25 Championship.

Eleven new players have arrived at Carrow Road this summer, and this includes two new strikers, in the form of Danish international Mathias Kvistgaarden and Jovon Makama, even though Sargent is one of the most highly-rated strikers in the Championship.

Sargent signed a new contract with Norwich two years ago, tying him to the club until 2028, and he enjoyed a third consecutive successful season in 2024-25, scoring 15 goals in 28 Championship matches for the Canaries despite missing two months with a calf injury.

Josh Sargent has already nearly returned to the Bundesliga this summer

Such have been the quality of Sargent's performances in a yellow and green shirt that Sargent has been the subject of transfer speculation for several months.

Speaking at an event put on by BBC Radio Norfolk in July, the Norwich sporting director Ben Knapper admitted that there was "big interest" in Sargent, and there have been reports of interest in Sargent from Nottingham Forest from as long ago as March, as well as newly-promoted Premier League clubs Burnley and Leeds over the summer.

But more concrete than these rumours was the interest of Bundesliga club Wolfsburg, whose firm interest in taking Sargent back to the German league was rebuffed by the Canaries earlier in the summer. With Sargent having started his professional career in the Bundesliga at Werder Bremen, he was already familiar to Bundesliga clubs, meaning that a bid from Germany was no surprise.

Wolfsburg's bid for Sargent was rejected by the player himself. Negotiations had centred around a deal reported to be worth in the region of £20 million, but the player, who was reported by the Norwich Evening News to have had the "final decision" over the transfer, turned it down. This rejection caused Wolfsburg to drop their interest in Sargent and focus their attention on a loan deal for the Napoli forward Jesper Lindstrøm instead, and this was completed in July.

Sargent will start up front for Norwich if he stays, but him staying is far from guaranteed

The allocation of shirt numbers to players at the start of each season may seem like something of a trivial matter, and we should be careful to not read too much into such a decision either way. But the allocation of this number again to this player may offer a hint at how centrally important Josh Sargent is to Norwich, although it should be added that this is the same number that Sargent has already worn for the last two seasons.

It's already known that wearing the number 9 shirt means a lot to Sargent himself. He acquired this squad number - which had been allocated to the departing Jordan Hugill for the 2022-23 season - in 2023 and the Pink 'Un reported at that time that he said: "I wanted it. I like being number nine. I like being striker."

With 71 goals in 46 Championship matches last season, Norwich were the second-highest goalscorers in the division behind champions Leeds United. And Sargent is one of the best strikers in the Championship, with 44 League goals over the last three seasons for a team that has not often threatened the top of the table. Should he stay at Carrow Road this summer, there's little question that he'll be starting for them in 2025-26. Should he go, the number 9 shirt will become vacant again and could be taken by his replacement.

There remains a possibility that Josh Sargent will leave Carrow Road this summer. There are still more than three weeks of the summer transfer window left to run, and he is a highly coveted player. But this is a hint that he'll be staying for the season and that he's likely to not just be in Liam Manning's plans, but the first-choice up front for Norwich again this season. But there remain no guarantees that such a highly sought-after player will still be with the club by the end of the transfer window.