Barnsley have made their second January signing of the week with the long expected capture of striker Carlton Morris from Championship leaders (and last weekend’s opponents) Norwich City.
The 25 year old has been at Carrow Road since he was 11 years old however has made only one, 13 minute, substitute appearance for them since signing a professional contract in the summer of 2016.
That came in a 1-0 home defeat to Wigan in the Championship on the 4th March 2015 whilst he has had eight loan spells at six different clubs.
His first loan came in January 2015 when he joined League Two Oxford and scored his first professional goal on his second appearance, in a 2-1 League Cup triumph at Bristol City.
That was his only goal of the 2014-2015 season in which after playing 10 games for Oxford he appeared eight times for York (of which they lost six) before his brief cameo for Norwich.
2015-2016 saw Morris head north of the border as he joined Scottish Premiership side Hamilton Academical in which he scored in two of his first four games, netting back to back in a 4-0 win over Dundee United and 2-0 victory at Inverness. His next goal also came against Inverness in a 4-3 defeat in December 2015, before netting his first winner in a 1-0 win at Kilmarnock exactly a month later.
It was the tail end of the season where Morris really hit form, scoring four times in his final six games (including his first brace in a 3-1 win at Dundee United) although he was also booked in four successive games and five out of six as Hamilton finished 10th.
Morris started 2016-2017 featuring for Norwich’s Under 23 side in the Football League Trophy, playing four times and scoring in a 4-1 win over MK Dons (a side he would later join) before being loaned out to Rotherham in January 2017. Injury denied him a debut until March when he came on in a 5-1 defeat at QPR and made a further seven appearances in a season in which the Millers finished bottom of the Championship, 28 points adrift of safety.
He was on the move again in 2017-2018 with this season becoming his most prolific in front of goal. League One Shrewsbury Town signed Morris on a season long loan, with his first goal coming in his third appearance in a 3-2 win over Rochdale. Morris would go on to net another nine goals that season (his only one to date where he has reached double figures) with one of the strikes a crucial one in the Play-Off Semi-Final second leg against Charlton which secured a 2-0 aggregate success. Unfortunately though Morris failed to help the Shrews reach the second tier for the first time in 29 years as they were defeated at Wembley by his previous club Rotherham who made an instant return to the Championship.
As well as scoring ten times Morris played 54 games, comfortably his best season but hope turned to despair as he had been replaced in that final after 66 minutes by ex red Stefan Payne due to tearing his ACL and would therefore miss most of 2018-2019, only making a couple of appearances for Norwich’s Under 23 side towards the end of the campaign.
This did not waver the Canaries faith in him however and he was rewarded with a new contract in May 2019, extending his stay at Carrow Road until 2021 and was immediately loaned back out to Rotherham who were back in League One, He would net only four times in 28 appearances for the Millers and was then loaned out to MK Dons for the remainder of 2019-2020, scoring twice in 10 games, including on his debut at Coventry whilst also picking up the first and so far only red card of his career in a 3-1 defeat at Portsmouth.
Morris obviously impressed at Stadium MK as he would rejoin the Dons for 2020-2021 and had scored four times in 24 games before being recalled by Norwich to sign for Barnsley with his last goal coming in a 2-1 defeat at Accrington Stanley on the 5th December.