Who would have thought a year ago that Josh Sargent would become such a vital member of City's squad?

While I personally have always liked what I've seen of the American, clearly, there were many things standing in the way of him reaching his potential last year.

Arriving with a big price tag on your head is not easy for any player, even if that tag is peanuts compared to what certain other clubs pay.

But on top of that, he was coming into one of the toughest leagues in the world, playing out of position and settling into a new country in a team that was clearly always going to be up against it.

Therefore, his first season was inevitably tough and as could plainly be seen, his confidence was shot as illustrated by that agonising miss against Brighton.

Beneath all that though, he always showed one trait that immediately endears a player to me - work rate.

Even at the worst of times last season, you never saw Sargent slump his shoulders, wander around or sulk - he would always work his socks off even when he was clearly struggling to fire.

As another auburn-haired man to lead the City attack will tell you, debut seasons don't always have to be barnstorming to cement your place in Norwich folklore.

This season though, he's added the end product that his work deserves and has been the brightest spark in what has been a fairly dull season - even if our current standing suggests otherwise.

The fact City are in third and a point off the top is more of an indictment of the quality of the league than a testament to the team.

Unfortunately, I've really struggled to enjoy the season so far.

Clearly, I don't expect us to win every game, convincingly, while playing beautiful football. But I do expect more.

It feels a little to me that we're now at a make-or-break point of the season - even if it does still feel early.

Games are coming thick at the minute, but more pertinently, the standard of opposition is greater.

They say there are no easy games at this level, but the way we've been able to pick up seven wins without ever really playing well suggests otherwise.

But the seven games between now and the World Cup include all of the rest of the top four, Luton - who are in seventh - and an in-form Stoke.

It will be heading into the World Cup break for me that will tell us whether we are where we are on merit or if it is in fact a bit of a false, early position.

The league is extraordinarily tight - while we are a point off the top, Cardiff in 18th, could be level on points with us by 5pm on Saturday. That's how tight it is.

We could easily come out of this congested period languishing in midtable and, frankly, if we continue performing how we have done in the past few weeks, we very well could be.

It is for this reason that I think it is time that we really get behind Josh as the leading man - even if it is at the expense of Teemu Pukki, genuinely an all-time great for the club.

Sargent is clearly in the form of his life and that is something we need to be capitalising on.

Personally, I think the best solution is to work a system around being able to play both Pukki and Sargent in advanced roles and not pushing either out wide.

In the brief flashes where we've seen the two of them up top together, there have been glimpses of what could be.

Pukki is still an incredibly intelligent player, who still brings so much to the table even if he hasn't hit his usual levels of potency in front of goal.

If I were picking the team, I would start with that front two and build the rest of the team around it, rather than trying to fit square pegs into round holes just for the sake of getting both in the side.

For me, there is no reason why they can't both be in natural positions.

But, and I wouldn't ever have expected to be saying this a year ago, but if there is genuinely only room for one of them to play as an out and out striker, on form alone, it has to be Sargent.