-
Ornstein says Arsenal scouted Havertz extensively when he was at Leverkusen.
-
Arsenal were in contact with his representatives in 2020, but were not able to pay the price Leverkusen demanded.
-
Havertz popped up on Arsenals radar again around March this year, when he was approaching final 2 years of his contract.
-
Mount, Gundogan and Kudus were looked at in the summer.
-
Arteta was the driving force behind our interest in Havertz. Edu was on board.
-
Bayern were interested in Havertz. Real Madrid wanted to wait and see how things unfolded with Harry Kane first.
-
Once Havertz learned of Arsenals interest, he had a Zoom meeting with Mikel Arteta. After this he was fully comitted to Arsenal.
-
Big difference in how public sees Havertz and how the people working in fotball see Havertz. He is highly rated in the fotball world.
-
Havertz has very good attitude and is “ultra comitted and dedicated” and fotball obsessed to get this right and work with the coaches.
-
His attitude, application and conduct on the training field is excellent. He is a very popular character with players and staff.
-
Ornstein mentions Barella as one CM option this summer, but sounds more like he mentions Barella as one of the midfielders that could have been signed this summer and not that he was somebody we specifically targeted.
-
Havertz base salary is in the region of 275k per week, almost same as at Chelsea.
-
His price/wage might make fans expect a more “glamorous” role from him when in reality his current role is a bit more subtle.
-
Marks the stats guy “Havertz is valued by Arteta for his work off the ball”. Havertz is really intelligent with his defensive positioning and doesnt shy away from a challenge when he needs to.
-
True tackles = Tackles + challenges lost + fouls comitted. A way to see a players tendency to “stick a foot in”
-
When in controlled posession, Havertz with his 6.4 true tackles ranks number 3 in the Arsenal squad. Adds a bite to the team when out of posession.
-
He has 1.4 blocked passses per 90 minutes, second highest in the Arsenal squad.
-
These are not the primary attributes Arsenal have brought him in for, but he has been in an important part in our defense being more solid this season.
Kudus could backup Saka and also play attacking mid
These guys must have written this piece in September and have been waiting for Havertz to score his goal to post it 🤣
Out here doing God’s work. Thanks, OP! It would be really interesting to know how this role he’s excelling at compares with someone like Xhaka prior to last year when he morphed into Goalzilla. I wonder if Arteta has initially prioritized this subtler, off the ball stuff with him on a longer term development track and will start asking him to do more offensive stuff when he settles in a bit more (maybe in a year or two as happened with Xhaka as well).
“Think of how stupid the average Arsenal supporter is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin
We’ve been defensively decent this season, but our XG is lower than it should be, and we aren’t that entertaining to watch, so Havertz is getting flack.
Havertz needs to add more creation of opportunities, and goals to get more support of the fans because we don’t see training sessions, or locker room banter. What fans see are games, and there is a noticeable drop of in game performance from the Leverkusen era of his career. I think a lot of this is due to Bundesleague being a lot easier, but also due to his inability to balance his defensive, and offensive duties.
Hopefully, he starts to add a little fluidity, and risk taking to his play. He has improved this season, but he is still maybe too focused on not making errors over impacting the game positively. As you can see from his goal, the more aggressively he plays in the final third the better.