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Ornstein says Arsenal scouted Havertz extensively when he was at Leverkusen.
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Arsenal were in contact with his representatives in 2020, but were not able to pay the price Leverkusen demanded.
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Havertz popped up on Arsenals radar again around March this year, when he was approaching final 2 years of his contract.
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Mount, Gundogan and Kudus were looked at in the summer.
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Arteta was the driving force behind our interest in Havertz. Edu was on board.
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Bayern were interested in Havertz. Real Madrid wanted to wait and see how things unfolded with Harry Kane first.
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Once Havertz learned of Arsenals interest, he had a Zoom meeting with Mikel Arteta. After this he was fully comitted to Arsenal.
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Big difference in how public sees Havertz and how the people working in fotball see Havertz. He is highly rated in the fotball world.
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Havertz has very good attitude and is “ultra comitted and dedicated” and fotball obsessed to get this right and work with the coaches.
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His attitude, application and conduct on the training field is excellent. He is a very popular character with players and staff.
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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.
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Havertz base salary is in the region of 275k per week, almost same as at Chelsea.
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His price/wage might make fans expect a more “glamorous” role from him when in reality his current role is a bit more subtle.
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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.
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True tackles = Tackles + challenges lost + fouls comitted. A way to see a players tendency to “stick a foot in”
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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.
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He has 1.4 blocked passses per 90 minutes, second highest in the Arsenal squad.
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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.
This! The manager and his staff him every day and know way better than all of us if he deserves to play or not
I think 2 key points missing from the summary:
- Havertz’s roles:
- He played as a 10 at Leverkusen
- He was then shifted to a 9 role at Chelsea
- Arteta now wants him in an 8 role
- Odegaard’s roles:
- He played as a 10
- He had to learn how to play in the 8 role when he joined Arsenal – it took a while for Odegaard to adjust to it
For all the comparisons with Declan Rice: Rice played as a 6 at West Ham and is playing as a 6 now.
Havertz is learning how to play in a whole new role.
It’s also good to see stats that back-up what some of us have been saying about him contributing defensively off-the-ball (while we acknowledged that he’s not made progress offensively).
Our players need to feed him the ball. There’s been a visible distrust from players such as Jorginho and Saka eg. not involving him in build-up/passing to him, Saka running back to receive the ball when Havertz is closer and so it’s no wonder he’s deferred so much to other players especially when he’s had good chances to take a shot while in or next to the box.
Big difference in how public sees Havertz and how the people working in fotball see Havertz. He is highly rated in the fotball world.
Great post but… I truly don’t understand comments like these? How can ‘the football world’ see things that fans don’t see? If a player is a bit wank, they’re a bit wank.
Most fans judge attacking players on goals/assists rather than their all round game and what they bring to the team. In both games against City that Havertz has played, Arsenal won both games. Dude’s a game changer in big games & saves Arsenal from buying a new ST & LCM
“How can someone know more about football than me? I don’t understand”
You must be a bit dense if that was all you got from my question
He may be a model professional and I dont doubt he is well regarded in the game.
However, I dont think will win the fans over. That takes performances on the pitch. Not necessarily the flair stuff, but it still takes performances and thats what we havent seen enough from Kai for us. His main contributions that fans notice are missed chances and his impact on our game is that we have become far ore defensive and boring than last season without him.
Base salary in the region of 275k. This isn’t talked enough about
“Think of how stupid the average Arsenal supporter is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin
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).
Kudus could backup Saka and also play attacking mid
I hope he comes good and trust the manager but that wage is ridiculous.
Why am I getting big Xhaka vibes
he had a Zoom meeting with Mikel Arteta. After this he was fully comitted to Arsenal.
This could be in the story for every new signing we’ve had since Arteta got here
I really hope he comes good. I really do.
An interesting thing I noticed is the perception of the player over the years. I remember reading an article before he signed for Chelsea and it was bigging him up to be the next Ozil. More recently I’ve seen people commenting that at Leverkusen he was more of a player who just had a knack for popping up and scoring a lot of goals rather than a player who gets heavily involved in general play.
Very contrasting reports of his qualities.
How dare you omit Amy Lawrence!
My guess is that he committed to arsenal because we would pay him and he would stay in london