Mohammed Kudus offers versatility and a spark, is this what Arsenal need?

Stat scouting the West Ham attacker that has been coveted by Arsenal and rumored to be potentially available for a hefty price

It is the start of the winter silly season and that means the rumors for players linked to Arsenal will start to ramp up. I don’t intend to give all of them this in-depth treatment when the rumor starts but I am going to make an exception for Mohammed Kudus.

Kudus is a player that has been a long-term link to Arsenal, he was initially looked at in the summer of 2023 to give back up to Bukayo Saka and bolster the attacking numbers. That deal ultimately could not be done with Arsenal pushing to the limit of what was allowed by PSR and unable to make the sales required to free up the room for him.

Now things are back in play after a season and a half in the Premier League where he has impressed at West Ham.

The reports are a bit flimsy at the moment but the gist of the current situation seems to be covered well in this Football London report:

Arsenal are reportedly set to be joined by Liverpool and Newcastle United in their race to sign West Ham winger Mohammed Kudus…

According to The Mirror, West Ham are unwilling to let Kudus leave without a fight and have insisted a price tag of £90m is set on the 24-year-old… Should the Premier League trio wish to wait until the summer to sign Kudus, a release clause is expected to be activated meaning they could sign him for £85m.

I have had mixed feelings on Kudus over the years and have bounced between not fully buying into him to thinking he can really offer something for Arsenal. I am still not fully sure where I fall on this right now, and to be honest it almost certainly would depend on the role he would fill at Arsenal and how much they had to spend to give it a try.

At a high-level the numbers are a bit mixed but generally positive, with some high highs (shots, dribbles) and some question marks as well (defensive work, ball progression).

One of the hard parts of doing analysis of Kudus is picking which position group to compare him against. For this my radar defaults to whatever a player has done 50% of their time in. As you can see in the graphic below that Kudus has played all over the pitch for West Ham:

The first radar here above uses information that compares him against other players that have played advanced left midfield for 50% or more of their minutes.

Here is what it looks like compared to left wingers instead.

Not drastically different but some of the extremes are dialed back a bit.

This ability to play all over the pitch has been something that has been with him for his career, acting as both a blessing giving his coaches and teams cover all over the field but also perhaps a curse because he hasn’t been able to nail down a position and make it his own.

This is what it looks like over his last three seasons played:

It is again all over the attacking part of the pitch and with a bit over half coming from the right-hand side, a third on the left-hand and the rest through the middle.

Overall, the stats here no matter who he is compared against here, look quite good at first glance and you can understand why he is a player that has been on the radar of Arsenal for a while.

Let’s dig in and take a look at him at a deeper level.

Detailed Stats

For the stats here I am going to use the current season (through December 28, 2024) and the last three seasons.

Shooting