Can Kai Havertz be the striker Arsenal need?

He's playing upfront. Is he the man?

Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

We’ve been waiting for an answer to this question for a long time:

What does Kai Havertz do?

When he first emerged at Bayer Leverkusen, the answer seemed to be simple: everything. He made his senior debut at age 17 as the kind of multifunctional player German football has become known for in the 21st century. He had the sense of space and timing to get in the box and cause problems reminiscent of Thomas Müller, but with an elegance to his game that looked more like Mesut Özil. He had the wonderful technique you’d want and crave in possession systems, but standing at 6’4 (1.93m). He could play in midfield, as a number ten, a striker or out wide. He was the whole package: an alleskönner (all-rounder). In modern, flexible systems where players are expected to contribute to all phases of play, he seemed perfect.

And so Chelsea snapped him up without thinking twice. I should emphasise that: they didn’t think about it. They were happy with adding Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech as their new attacking options to fit Frank Lampard’s new-look side (but no, seriously, they actually thought this). Havertz, though, was too good to avoid snapping up. Everyone expected he would go to Bayern, but the pandemic struck and suddenly the Bavarians had cash flow issues stopping them from getting the deal over the line. Chelsea, though, were good for the money straight away. This was a classic move of Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea: if there’s a top player available, just get him, and figure out where he fits later. That’s how they ended up signing Eden Hazard, and he became one of the best ever to play for the club.

It’s always going to be hard to adapt to a new league and new club. It’s also hard for a 21-year-old to move to a new country, especially in the middle of a pandemic when he couldn’t easily live a normal life or (I imagine) have family members and friends visit to help adjust. “Kai had five work days with us before he first played”, Lampard admitted some time after leaving Chelsea, “and that's just not beneficial to a player in any league, let alone when you're coming to the fastest, most physical league in the world”. That was made worse because Chelsea and Lampard didn’t really have a plan for how to play him. They were figuring it out on the fly, trying different things, and that stopped him from getting into a rhythm. Havertz himself picked up Covid in November, and that seemed to hit him worse than initially thought.

Thomas Tuchel replaced Lampard in January 2021 and came in with much more specific ideas. Havertz was more often playing in a front two alongside Werner and later Romelu Lukaku, though Tuchel would sometimes give him a different job for specific games. He could link well, press well, delivered in some big games, but always had a sense of disappointment. He felt more like a facilitator than someone with a starring role, didn’t score enough goals to play upfront for many, and lacked a killer attribute that defined him. He was an in-between player. That continued in his last year at Chelsea, when three different managers weren’t quite sure what he was best at.

Arsenal, though, was to be different. Unlike Chelsea, the Gunners did know why they were signing him. It was just a little complicated. He was to play as a “free eight”, replacing Granit Xhaka in the midfield. He’d be a creator who could also get in the box. It wasn’t what we’d seen him do at Chelsea, but Havertz clearly needed defining, and this would be definition. Mikel Arteta always knows exactly what he wants his players to be doing with and without the ball, and Havertz would finally be moulded into some kind of image.

The results were pretty good. He did get some good minutes in midfield, where he was the minor goal threat and creator everyone wanted from that position. But he was clearly pushing to play higher up the pitch. “A lot of times, the players decide where they have to play”, Arteta said of Havertz. “You can have certain ideas, but then you see certain relationships and it flows. When it flows, you have to let it go. That’s what is happening with Kai at the moment and he feels really comfortable there. The team is really comfortable with him there and the rest has happened naturally.”

It seems like this shift was the reason Arsenal didn’t sign a striker in the summer when many fans wanted to see one come in, but they did recruit a midfielder in Mikel Merino (is every Basque man called Mikel?). All but one of Havertz’ appearances this season have been upfront, both in a front two and on his own. He needed a position that’s his own, and he seems to have it. He has all the raw tools Arteta could want in a striker. He ticks all the attribute boxes.

But that doesn’t answer the most important question: can he think like a striker?

European football has a bit of a centre-forward problem. Think about top strikers under the age of 30 who grew up in Europe. Subtract anyone who isn’t an “out-and-out” number nine. There’s Erling Haaland, obviously. Then who? Looking at the most valuable players on Transfermarkt, the next names to hit those attributes are Alexander Isak, Viktor Gyökeres and Rasmus Højlund. Apparently Scandinavia is the place to be. But, Arsenal fans, would you have felt totally sure about it if the club had broke the bank this summer for any of them?

Now to really play to the Arsenal-supporting crowds: this is something Arsène Wenger predicted. “The strikers are South American today”, he said in 2015. “Europe doesn’t produce strikers any more. You look at countries like Germany, who played in Scotland or against Poland with Mario Götze up front – he’s a creative midfielder. I don’t think it’s because they do not want to play with a typical striker but they haven’t got one who’s fully convincing at the top level.

“From 14 [years old] onwards, when you start to position the players for their careers, maybe you have to work with specificity of a position again. Maybe we have to rethink completely the education and specialise earlier. […] What we produce now are good technical players because there are nice pitches out there – before you played in the park where you had to kick the ball up front and you had to fight. A boy of 12 who played against a boy of 16 had to be shrewd and push to get the ball. All those kind of things have gone.”

Havertz is, to a tee, the type of modern academy-coached player Wenger describes. He even plays upfront or Germany now. If he wants to shift gears and become a real striker, he doesn’t need to change his footballing skills as much as his mentality. He needs to have a ruthless selfish streak to keep taking on chances himself. There are signs this is happening. He’s taking more than a whole extra shot per 90 minutes this season compared to last, and they’re good chances. His xG per shot has very slightly increased at the same time that his shot volume has taken a big jump. Among those who have played more than 500 Premier League minutes this season, only Haaland and Nicolas Jackson (now there’s a guy I should write about one day) have been getting more xG per 90 than Havertz. At the same time, he’s taking fewer touches of the ball than he ever has in England. He’s thinking like a striker.

I cannot remember who this was, but I once read some sports psychologist (or someone similar) say a striker’s biggest mental challenge is knowing they’re going to miss most chances but being unafraid to keep trying regardless. Finishing is weird. Sometimes ball go in net and sometimes it doesn’t. Top strikers aren’t just better at striking the ball (though some are); they’re better at shrugging off the misses and going for the next chance. We’ve seen players struggle with this. I still think Timo Werner’s biggest problem has been that missing chances (which can happen to anyone) in that first season at Chelsea seemed to knock his confidence, causing him to start playing within himself. You could tell a similar story about Álvaro Morata. Luis Suárez, by comparison, missed a lot of chances during his first 18 months at Liverpool, but never let it affect his desire to score goals.

So what of Havertz? I don’t mean this as a criticism, but there will be a run of games at some point when the ball just isn’t going in the net for him. He’s been an up-and-down player in the past, hitting good runs of form and then stalling out for whatever reason. He can’t do that this time. He has got to learn to play through those frustrations. I know this is the nerdy analytics and tactics newsletter and we’re not supposed to say this here, but it’s a mentality issue. Can he keep going? Can he brush off any setbacks? He can’t hide as a proper striker the way he sometimes could elsewhere on the pitch.

Havertz has all the tools to be a top-level striker. He’s everything you’d want an academy to produce and can absolutely play that position. We just don’t know if he has “it”. You know what I mean. Time will tell.