Stephy Mavididi has become Montpellier’s first permanent signing of the 2020 summer transfer window. The Arsenal youth academy product has made the move to La Paillade from Juventus for just over £5.5m.
Mavididi spent last season on loan with Montpellier’s fellow Ligue 1 competitors FCO Dijon and the attacker ended the 2019/20 campaign as Dijon’s top goalscorer in all competitions, after bagging eight goals in 28 appearances for Les Hiboux, five of which came in the league.
Mavididi showed his quality in France’s top tier last season, helping Dijon to avoid relegation and the former England U20 international also displayed plenty of versatility as he featured in a variety of different positions across Dijon’s attack last term.
In this tactical analysis in the form of a scout report, we will look at some of the key aspects of Mavididi’s game during the 2019/20 season. We will look at how he performed within Dijon’s tactics last season, as well as how the 22-year-old may fit into Montpellier’s tactics next season, in this analysis.
Positioning and defensive work rate
Mavididi has primarily played as a centre forward throughout his career. However, last season, he was deployed in a variety of different positions for Dijon, who primarily utilised a 4-4-2 shape during the 2019/20 campaign, including the right and left midfield positions, where he frequently featured.
The ex-Arsenal man displayed a large degree of versatility by performing in these unfamiliar roles last season. While the attacker has been used to spending the majority of his time in the box or playing off the last shoulder of the opposition defence throughout his career, he often found himself occupying deeper positions both in and out of possession last season for Dijon.
The image above shows us Mavididi’s Ligue 1 heatmap for the 2019/20 campaign and here, we can see that while he covered a large variety of different areas on the pitch last season as a result of having played in plenty of different roles last term, the attacker spent plenty of his time on the left-wing. When deployed on the left-wing, he positioned himself quite wide and this is why we can see plenty of colour out almost as far as the touchline in this heatmap.
Furthermore, we can also see plenty of colour deep on the left-wing inside what would have been Dijon’s own half in this image, which indicates that Mavididi was deployed quite deep at times.
