Leeds United completed the signing of RB Leipzig striker Jean-Kévin Augustin for the remainder of the season on-loan, following the cancellation of his spell at AS Monaco.

The Whites have been well-documented in their pursuit of a new striker this January and they have found their man in the shape of RB Leipzig’s French striker Jean-Kévin Augustin, who arrived at the club on loan for the remainder of the season, with a potential option to buy, hinging on Leeds’ promotion hunt.

Patrick Bamford has been misfiring this season with just 10 league goals so far, which doesn’t strike as the worst record he could have had at this stage in the season, but with the chances that Marcelo Bielsa’s side create on a weekly basis, he should certainly have a lot more to his name by now.

This is the reason why Leeds were so keen on bringing in a new frontman to provide competition to Bamford and add the goals to the side to hopefully see them over the line in the race for automatic promotion.

Augustin has rubbed elbows with some of Europe’s most elite forwards, having broken through at PSG in 2014 around the likes of Edinson Cavani and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, RB Leipzig with Timo Werner, and then Monaco with Wissam Ben Yedder this season.

The 22-year-old’s stint at Monaco wasn’t the most fruitful and this was a major factor in why he was able to exit the club and move to Leeds to quickly in the past week. 

Here, we take a look at Augustin’s season at the French side to see how well he has been performing as he looks to hit the ground running at Elland Road…

The French under-21 international hasn’t had the best of seasons as he played a sporadic role at Monaco, thanks to the scintillating form of Ben Yedder, who is currently Ligue 1’s top scorer this season.

Along with Ben Yedder’s form, Monaco have Stevan Jovetic and Islam Slimani in their squad, which pushed Augustin further down the pecking order in the league.

Due to the depth that Monaco had up front, Augustin only managed to play a total of 586’ minutes for them in all competitions, which will be disappointing to him, having been built up as one of Europe’s top goalscoring talents in recent years.

In that time, he only managed one goal, coming in the 2-1 win over Marseille in the Coupe de la Ligue. However, while he has only managed one goal in his stint at Monaco, he has shown his time elsewhere has been much more prolific, averaging a goal in just over every other game throughout his career, despite being limited to appearances mostly off the bench.

His xG stands at 1.71, which is a theme very similar to Bamford’s at Leeds, as he underperforms against his expected goals tally. However, the difference between the two here lies in the fact that Bamford has started all but two league games for the Whites while Augustin was always on the periphery.

What outlines his success in terms of being able to convert chances into decent attempts is that he has averaged a shooting accuracy of 50%, meaning half of his efforts are on target and test the ‘keeper.

Leeds create many chances of a similar nature, where Bamford, or whoever, will have to take a quick effort at goal in a crowded penalty area, meaning accuracy is often worsened, so averaging such an accuracy bodes well for the Frenchman.

The lone striker role in Marcelo Bielsa’s team requires much more than just goalscoring prowess, exemplified by Eddie Nketiah’s omission and subsequent recall by Arsenal. Bamford’s hold up play and ability to find space, linking up with other attackers is a key reason why Bielsa places so much faith in him. So it would be important for Augustin to demonstrate similar qualities, to which he demonstrates strong passing with an average of 79% passing accuracy and solid dribbling with a 51.9% success rate past his opponents.

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More often than not, a lone striker can become isolated and must rely on their individual ability to craft chances and Augustin has demonstrated that in abundance, mainly at Leipzig, but what his numbers back up.

Despite barely playing for longer than a single half of football at Monaco, Augustin still managed a total of 26 touches in the opposition box, which works out at 3.99 per game. This would surely improve massively at Elland Road if he can remain as lively off the ball as he has been in Ligue 1, regardless of his lack of goals.

These figures should be taken with a pinch of salt as they show his lack of activity in Monaco’s attack in the face of an alarming lack of game time, for a striker that has shown great promise and was on a similar standard of youth performance as a certain Kylian Mbappe.