Norwich City: Stats behind Borja Sainz's start to the season

The Norwich City winger has gone from supporting cast to star of the show at Carrow Road, filling the void left by Marseille man Jonathan Rowe - and then some. From a long-range drive against Middlesbrough to a delicate lob versus Hull, he also appears to be having his own goal of the season competition, performing this transformation with a good degree of flair.

But beyond the watchable technique and the talismanic character there are reasons for his success, themes that explain such a huge improvement in such a short space of time. They become clear with a closer look at the statistics he's produced, and many of them are as impressive as the goals he's scored.

The most obvious one is the goal tally, which already stands at 12 in all competitions. Eleven of those have come in the Championship, contributing to two consecutive EFL player of the month awards and significantly to the 18 points his side have amassed this term. In fact, without them the Canaries would have eight fewer points.

He tops the league's goalscoring charts ahead of highly-praised West Brom striker Josh Maja, chief Leeds bagsman Joel Piroe and Coventry's Haji Wright, while nearly tripling the tally of team-mate Josh Sargent. Add to that his two assists, both in that 4-0 drubbing of Hull, and he's been involved in more than half of the team's league goals during 2024-25.

The Spaniard has been among the goals at Carrow Road (Image: Martyn Haworth/Focus Images Ltd)

What makes that even more impressive in statistical terms is that he's scored all of those goals from an xG (expected goals) total of just 5.7, according to Opta's deep dive on the Spaniard's season. That means he's scored almost double the goals the average player would be expected to from the chances he's received, and it's the greatest over-performance in the second tier by a distance.

Vital in that has been the effort made by head coach Johannes Hoff Thorup to structure a team that finds its key players in advanced positions. "What we try to do every time we play is to create some openings, some patterns, so our best players can arrive in the positions where they can actually do the best things," he said last month.

Those efforts appear to be paying off, too. Sainz may have significantly outperformed his xG, but he has already received a better combined quality of chance than he did in the entirety of his first year in Norfolk, when the stat reached only 4.9. The theory is also backed up by the number of touches he's having in the opposition box, which has increased by two every 90 minutes under Thorup.

The 23-year-old is also shooting more often than he was in the previous system, which, allied to a 44pc increase in the xG of those efforts, helps explain why it's been such a prolific few months.

Rarely is a player's game perfect, however, and it's in the creative department that Sainz appears to be lacking.

Sainz hasn't matched his goalscoring with creativity yet (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

He's only in the 21st percentile of wide men for shot-creating actions, standing at 2.77 per game. For reference, Onel Hernandez has registered an average of 4.24, Marcelino Nunez 3.72 and Stoke's Bae Jun-ho, the league's joint-top assister, 3.86. Given he only claimed two assists last season, that aspect is clearly one missing if he's to fulfil the considerable potential he's shown in yellow and green.

But for now he's made huge strides, passing both the eye test and the statistical one. He's scoring goals regularly, producing scarcely believable individual moments and dragging a team forward that in recent weeks hasn't been at its best.

It might not take a data analyst to see that, but many of them will be well aware of him by now.