With just under a year remaining on his Châteauroux contract, 23-year-old centre-forward Andrew Jung (192cm/6’3”, 82kg/180lbs) is currently one of the most highly sought-after players in France’s second tier, Ligue 2. Jung is coming off the back of a successful 2020/21 campaign which he spent out on loan at US Quevilly-Rouen Métropole (QRM) in France’s third tier, Championnat National. He helped the impressive Bruno Irles-led side to a second-place finish and promotion from Championnat National to Ligue 2 for the 2021/22 campaign, ending the season with 21 goals, making him the top scorer in Championnat National. Meanwhile, his parent club Châteauroux suffered relegation from Ligue 2 to the third tier for next season, finishing dead last with just 23 points.
Now back at Châteauroux, it’s been reported that Jung favours a permanent move away from his parent club, intending to ply his trade at a higher level in Ligue 2. This has allegedly piqued the interest of several second-tier sides, including his home last season QRM, as well as Nancy, Auxerre, and Toulouse all of whom will be hoping to compete for promotion to Ligue 1 next term.
So, with no shortage of interest from Ligue 2 clubs in the in-form striker and less than a year remaining on his Châteauroux contract, perhaps a move away from Stade Gaston Petit to a second-tier side is inevitable this summer. In our tactical analysis piece, in the form of a scout report, we’ll provide tactical analysis of some key strengths and weaknesses to Jung’s game. We’ll analyse his successful role within Irles’ QRM tactics last season and we’ll share our view on how his potential new club should utilise him to get the best out of him next season.
Clinical finishing, attacking positioning and movement
As mentioned in our intro, Jung scored 21 goals for QRM in Championnat National last season. He managed to score this many goals from an xG of just 13.9, which essentially tells us that he successfully finished more chances than he would have been expected to based on the quality of shooting opportunities presented to him.
Jung took a relatively high number of shots per 90 for a Championnat National striker last season (2.24). This proved to be a very good strategy on behalf of QRM because of how clinical Jung was in front of goal. Firstly, the 23-year-old was very accurate in front of goal last season, with 53.85% of his shots hitting the target. This impressive level of accuracy and directional control over his shots naturally played a big part in him converting so many of his chances and played a big part in him getting so many chances, with his team undoubtedly becoming more and more confident with presenting chances to Jung, knowing he is reliable in goalscoring situations.
Thanks in part to his accuracy, as well as the quality of his shots in terms of power and placement, Jung generated the best goal conversion rate (32.308%) of any striker to have been on the pitch for 800 minutes or more in France’s third tier last season. This shows us that despite taking a lot of shots, Jung continued to convert his chances at a very high rate. This, along with his xG overperformance highlights that last season, Jung was a very clinical finisher.
Intelligent positioning and movement played an important part in Jung enjoying the chances that he did, and as a result, being so clinical and scoring so many goals last term. So, what was Jung’s role at QRM? And how did he move and position himself to regularly create the best possible chances for himself?
Figure 1 shows our first example of Jung in action for QRM last season. Here, we see the striker sitting in the right centre-forward position in the 4-4-2 system which Irles’ side primarily lined up in last term. We also see a teammate on the right-wing in possession just inside the opposition half, with Jung dropping in between the lines to make himself an option to receive the ball to feet. At times last season, Jung did receive a short pass in this type of position. On these occasions, he likes to receive the ball at pace, as he’s good at controlling the ball with his first touch and he also often likes to play little flick-on passes which pacey passes allow him to do.
Jung was constantly moving for QRM last season he was really only ever static up front when dangerously occupying a threatening open space. A lot of the time, his movements were quite subtle. However, he was constantly scanning his surroundings and making at least slight adjustments to his positioning, if not more dramatic movements into different areas of the pitch. We see an example of the latter in figure 1. He was constantly looking for ways to marginally improve his positioning to make himself a better passing option and to put himself in a better position should he receive a pass. As we’ll go on to see in figure 2 in just a moment, Jung demonstrated his restlessness in this passage of play by quickly redirecting his movement.
