Stat Scouting: Junior Kroupi

Breaking down the Bournemouth forward’s positional profile, finishing skill, and whether he’s ready to make the leap to Arsenal.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the next wave of young Premier League attackers, Bournemouth’s Junior Kroupi has almost certainly crossed your radar. He has featured on Adam’s striker rankings and now he is starting to pop up as a serious target for Arsenal’s attack.

His debut season in the Premier League has turned heads and he will be placed in all the January transfer rumors with links to Arsenal, PSG, and just about any other big club that would like an attacker.

At just 20 years old, the French forward has already proven he knows where the back of the net is and has put up very impressive shot and key pass numbers.

With Arsenal always on the lookout for versatile, high-upside attacking talent, it is well worth digging past the highlight-reels and taking a deep dive into his full underlying statistical profile.

Positional breakdown

Let’s start by breaking down where exactly he plays. Here is the breakdown of where his minutes have come in the Premier League so far.

The midfield and defensive minutes here are weird artifacts that sometimes happen when a player comes on as a sub, especially when the formation changes. I am working on getting it fixed but it isn’t fully implemented yet, so for now just know that he doesn’t actually spend time playing center back.

He has primarily played as a “10” behind a striker but with a fair amount of time as the actual player that has led the line. Even as a “10” I think that he has played much more like a second striker than as a creative player that is pulling the strings in the final third.

At Lorient he did play a bit more as a wide player with about 10% of his minutes coming off the left wing but he was still primarily a striker or one of two strikers there.

His touch and defensive actions heat map back this up and match what you would expect for a striker-type profile.

He touches shade to the left and that makes sense for him as a right-footed player who will want to cut in and shoot off of that stronger side.

Overall, if he were to come to Arsenal, my view is that it would be as a striker or at least a player that we want to see give us striker-like output regardless of his team sheet starting position.

For the rest of the analysis here, I am going to use the striker population to make the comparisons because I think that is the best fit overall for trying to analyze him.

Shooting

Let’s start with his best strength and what should be the most important trait for an attacker like Kroupi, looking at his shooting numbers.