Mikel Arteta says everyone at Arsenal loves Kai Havertz and that the player’s recent form is a reward for his hard work.
You know the back story already. There were plenty of raised eyebrows when the Gunners were linked with the Germany international and even more when we rushed through a deal with Chelsea worth £65 million.
Outside the club, debate raged about the role the 24-year-old would be asked to play and whether he was a direct replacement for the outgoing Granit Xhaka, a potential target man up front or something in between.
After a tentative start in red and white that saw him take the term ‘finding his feet’ far too literally, Havertz now looks very at home in Arteta’s starting lineup, wherever he’s asked to play.
“It shows his character and how he has dealt with all those question marks,” said Arteta when asked about Havert’s impact in his pre-Brentford press conference.
“The attitude he showed all the time when things were not that good in certain phases of the game, but he continued to work hard and that’s why he’s loved by everybody here.
“And then we can see his quality and intelligence on the pitch and the contribution he’s having to the team, so we’re very happy with him.”
Arguably the most surprising characteristic of Havertz’s game has been his toil off the ball. With a gangly frame and long legs, he has the ability to steal the ball off the opponents both in the air and on the ground.
On Havertz holding the key to Arsenal’s high press, Arteta said: “Yeah and his ability to occupy a space as well as in transition moments to exploit them.
“The aggression that he has in high presses is really, really good. He has the physical qualities to play very different kinds of games and that’s an attribute that we felt was going to be very positive for us.”
If it took Havertz a little while to settle at Arsenal, fellow summer signing Declan Rice had no such issues. In fact, the midfielder has worn the club-record £100 million fee lightly.
In recent weeks, there’s even been a swagger about him. Crowned Player of the Year at the London Football Awards he revealed that he’s set himself a target for goals and assists having had a nibble at Arsenal’s recent goal feast.
“That’s something that is amongst the team that they want to keep improving,” said Arteta about the desire of Rice and his teammates to impact games in the final third.
“They all believe that they have another gear or two to go and that’s the level that we want to push them to. We are achieving it with the majority of the players and we have to continue to do it.”
Rice has five goals and five assists to his name so far; his best-ever tally in a Premier League campaign and there are still 11 games to go. Havertz has seven goals and three assists to his name; if he nets once more in the league he’ll match his best tally at Chelsea.
Class acts, both of them. Havertz has taken more time to settle in but is no functioning a lot better. I like not having a ‘forward’ and having goal threats all around the team, makes it a lot harder for the opposition.
I still believe the guys who say “but we need a killer who scores 30 goals a season” completely misunderstand how this team functions.
Without a ball playing, pressing, intelligent, creative number 9, this system really doesn’t work. And that’s proven when Eddie plays.
And may I just add, to all those who lose their minds over media stories, that it was widely reported just three weeks ago that Arteta was looking to sell Kai Havertz.
https://www.football365.com/news/arsenal-recoup-ridiculous-fee-havertz-transfer-arteta
Nice find. Wow, what an astonishingly idiotic article! And Kai has proven every word of it completely and utterly wrong over the last three weeks.
They literally just make shit up.
We must remember this on long summer nights spent trawling through the bowels of the Internet.
OMFG! Did anyone else see the “how Arsenal will line up at the start of the 2027 season” article the other day? Without a doubt the most breathtakingly ignorant piece ever written. The fact that Saliba was the only remaining starting defender (although now at LCB) was a bit of a shocker. The “fact” that Ben White is definitely going to be sold this summer and the deal is done on his replacement helps to explain this (yeah… right), although Tomiyasu having made left back his permanent, starting home seemed unlikely. Oh and (drumroll) Toney up top. Purest bullshit, hand… Read more »
That website really has gone down the drain
I used to love it. Now it’s just a shiny turd of journalism
shiny? you sure?
I’ve stopped reading football365, teamtalk and their ilk. Clearly they’re pushing thru an agenda. Much prefer football podcasts instead, you can find pretty good ones on YouTube.
Why does a similar or same system work even really really work with Haaland?
I’m just going to say something I’ve been feeling for a long time.
I really hate Haaland. Like, I hate watching him. I think he’s the least aesthetically pleasing footballer I’ve ever seen.
Whatever you feel about Messi or Ronaldo or Neymar or Mbappe, watching them is special. Like art.
But Haaland is just horrible to watch. All his shots kinda scuff. Even runs weird. Not a fan.
“Heeeeey you GUUUUUYS!”
When they put him together – in the same lab as Ivan Drago as it happens – they added everything except style, grace and flair.
Haaland is a different snimal. A cheat code 😅🤣
Spot on sir. The system becomes like a corrupted computer when Eddie is playing. Thank god it seems Arteta recognises this now. Eddie seems a nice lad but he cannot link play, tackle, head, close down very well and clearly plays on a different level to what we need. Hope we can get 20 million in the summer for him but think it will be closer to 10.
With the current market I reckon closer to 25-30 million. Honestly.
The market may be different this year with so many clubs hitting the FFP wall. This and our history of selling makes £10 more realistic.
The problem is/was never with Harvert The problem is with our negotiating. Here is a player who wasn’t too hot at Chelsea and who everyone at Chelsea didn’t care if he stayed or left. We payed 65m for him (I’d like to see where negotiations started from ). We couldn’t get a fee for Pepe, Auba and Bellerin and we paid 65m for Harvertz. If we think it’s a good deal now, imagine how good a deal it would have been if we paid 30m for him ? You don’t pay over the top for a player you think will… Read more »
Possibly, but maybe if we hold out for that £30m, it takes another three weeks yo close the deal. Then he’s missed the whole of preseason, and maybe he’s still not found his form yet and we’re looking at a couple of draws through this run rater than seven wins and we’re out of the title race.
If Arteta is dead set on a player, just pay the damn money and get the deal done.
Not sure 30m would have been feasible. Madrid was involved for Kai, meanwhile ManU was actively over-paying for Mason Mount. Sure 30m would have been great, so would Rice for 80m, but the market doesn’t support it. Chelsea was in a position of selling viable players that they would have been satisfied keeping – not comparable to our position with Pepe, Auba, etc.
Actually I believe Chelski were kinda desperate to sell somebody at that moment. I’m pretty sure part the reason we got him fast was they needed to make a sale on the previous years FFP window. So maybe we could have squeezed them for another 10 or 15 mil. But we don’t know the full context. Ultimately we still paid less than they did originally, and he is starting to look like a good buy. When the deal first broke I was surprised by how young he is. He has loads of time to make himself seem like a bargain.
People select the examples that support their point and ignore any contrary evidence. We paid a lot for Havertz, but got Jorginho cheaply. We robbed Madrid for Martin Ødegaard–well, it wouldn’t have been a robbery if he had turned out to be crap. But he isn’t crap, is he? And that’s the real point. No one complains about the price paid for Ben White (huge in context) or for Rice (huge, full stop) because they have proven to be worth it. A lot of people were complaining about the price we paid for Havertz, but–until your post–I hadn’t heard anything… Read more »
The amount of luck we had with Martin Ødegaard is truly staggering. He came on loan and did just enough to convince us to get him on a decent price. Had he played during the.loan like since his permanent move, Madrid would have just kept him or we would have had to pay twice as much money!
30 odd million for a player of his caliber and age is an absolute steal.
We still paid less than Chelsea for him.
It has a lot to do with age. If he spends his entire career at the club, he has 400 games ahead of him.
I thought Chelsea offered him a new deal and he refused,no?
But you just don’t know any of that. Anything about the negotiation, whether or not Chelsea wanted to keep him etc. And look at it another way – Chelsea spent over a quarter of a billion on 3 central midfielders in 8 months in 2023. And Arsenal’s 80 million worth of Chelsea ‘rejects’ would walk into their team without any issues whatsoever. Doesn’t seem so expensive in that context.
Well, if Kai continues the form he is in right now, hell, I’ll give him flowers too..overpay for him my ass!
I’m sorry, but this guy is not a good footballer at all. He can’t dribble, is crap at heading the ball and has missed so many chances. Just because Arteta won’t drop him doesn’t make him good. And no, scoring in a 6-0 dribbling of Sheffield doesn’t make him good. He’s complete crap and we completely overpaid for him. This is called doubling down on your mistakes, and it’s exactly what Arteta did with David Raya as well.
This is awesome!🤣
There’s a reason you’re getting down voted. Do you watch him play with a bucket over your head or something? If you do, why not inform yourself with a look at the stats produced after his performances so that you don’t say anything daft like that again.
Or remove the bucket….
Only here to see the bucket head.
I liked him when he was in Guns N Roses.
“Just because Arteta won’t drop him doesn’t make him good.”
I’m hoping Arteta sees the light as we enter the business end of our relegation battle.
No argument needed here my friend, your username did say you only have eyes for Ebue🤷
I can safely say that this dude is expressing his personal opinions which are totally at odds with the opinions of the Official Emmanuel Eboue Appreciation Society.
an easy way to spot this is to remember that the official opinions of the Emmanuel Eboue Appreciation Society are only released in its official language, North Korean.
This is either brilliant sarcastic trolling, or…
I’m going with trolling……. hopefully….
That’s certainly a take. An incredibly delusional one, but a take nonetheless
F*tgooner will be envious of the number of downvotes there! He tries to get lots but rarely achieves that many,
Emery would have said: “We are in a good moment”.
Well, that depends on the time of day he says it. Gud e….🤣
He’s always looked like a potentially great footballer physically and technically, it’s the mental side to his game that has sometimes been lacking. Feels like Arteta (Cuesta? too?) is sorting that out… he’s going to get better and better
Yes. I totally agree with you. I believe Havertz will become a totally different animal soon. Arsenal players have been playing with more fluidity and better finishing. The players have to put in more efforts to be clinical in front of goal. If they managed to be so earlier, Arsenal would be a few points more than Liverpool and Manchester City. To lose 0-2 to West Ham at home last year when you had more than 30 shots compared with 6 of the opponent is just not acceptable. Saka, Martinelli, Trossard and Havertz should have scored one or two goals… Read more »
I agree with you totally. Havertz will be a different animal soon. If Arsenal players are more clinical in front of goal, they would have been a few points above the nearest rivals. All efforts must be made to improve the finishing further. If it is done, Arsenal should be the champion this season.