The Tractor Boys, who became the first English football team to do so since Nigel Adkins’ Southampton in 2012, stunned the football world by receiving back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League.
Jeremy Sarmiento, an Ipswich Town loanee, may not play at Portman Road again the next season because Brighton and Hove Albion manager Roberto De Zerbi has acknowledged that the attacker “needs to play in a different context”.
Sarmiento’s late goal to earn a 3-2 victory over the Saints back at the beginning of April was one of the most crucial goals along route to Kieran McKenna’s team making their Premier League comeback for the first time in 22 years.
In a risky move, the former Manchester United assistant coach substituted the Ecuadorian international for leading scorer Conor Chaplin with one minute remaining in normal time. But it was a chance that paid off, as Sarmiento tucked the ball home in stoppage time’s seventh minute to give the East Anglian team a decisive victory and bring chaos around Portman Road.
Sarmiento scored several significant goals for Ipswich Town during his six-month loan period. Shortly after joining the team on loan in January, the 21-year-old also scored a late equalizer to steal a draw against Leicester City.
However, Sarmiento was never one of the first choices on the roster, and Brighton head coach De Zerbi intimated as much in his most recent press conference [quotes via Sussex World] that this is the reason Sarmiento’s future may not be with the Tractor Boys:
