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West Brom sign Filip Krovinovic

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Slaven Bilic has made his first signing at West Brom with Filip Krovinovic arriving at the Hawthorns on a season-long loan from Benfica. 

His arrival was announced on the official West Brom Twitter page on Friday afternoon.

According to Matt Wilson, West Brom reporter with the Express and Star, the club does not have an option to buy and Benfica do not have a recall clause in January.

The 23-year-old attacking midfielder joined Benfica from Rio Ave in 2017 for a fee of £3.15m.

VERDICT

Krovinovic has made 28 appearances for Benfica, scoring just two goals and registering a single assist. The Croatia Under-21 international suffered a cruciate ligament injury that hampered his progress as he found himself behind Florentino Luis, Gedson Fernandes and Joao Felix, and the first Croatian to play for the Baggies will be looking to get his career back on track with Bilic. Krovinovic has some great underlying stats despite not scoring or providing an assist last season. His pass success rate is 88.8% and he makes 8.26 passes to the final third per 90 minutes with an 84.8% success rate. He makes 14.66 forward passes per 90 with an 86.2% success rate and 3.98 dribbles. He needs to provide more attacking returns though– an xG of 0.15 is only passable and an xA (expected assist) of 0.07 is poor [wyscout.com]. It will be interesting to see if his style of play can fit in with the bruising nature of the Championship.

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