Kai Havertz's finishing is frustrating but probably not a problem
No one likes to hear that it is probably just randomness, but it is probably just randomness
Let’s do a thought experiment.
It is the 85th minute of Arsenal’s match away against Liverpool in May, Arsenal are 2 points back in the table, the score is tied 1-1. Arsenal are attacking Liverpool with the ball at Martin Odegaard’s feet, he plays a little slip pass into Kai Havertz and he has a chance at goal to win the match.
How are you feeling about the chances that this is being converted to a winning goal?
If you are like many Arsenal fans right now, probably not great.
It has been a tough run of matches for Havertz in front of goal and with Arsenal going through a cold run of finishing as a team, a striker that has never fully won over the fans about his ability has come under the microscope for his contribution to it. This is especially heightened with the transfer window open and rumors swirling and people dreaming about replacements.
When we get into these situations I find myself asking, is the consensus correct?
Let’s dig in.
High Level Shots Data
The best place to start is looking at the shots he has taken this season.
In all competitions this season Havertz has scored 12 goals from 14 expected goals, that is 0.47 goals per 90 from 0.54 xG per 90. Those numbers are solid and would put him in the 67th percentile for goals (good, not great) and the 85th percentile for non-penalty xG (very good, just short of elite).
He is doing this on just decent shot volume (2.6 shots per 90, 53rd percentile) making things up with excellent average shot quality.
How is his finishing?
Overall, this season, Havertz goals have tracked pretty well with his xG numbers.
He has gone cold recently (like the rest of the team) but this looks like an outlier compared to what he has done previously this year.
Looking at the post-shot xG values, which measure in addition to where the shot was taken from where it ended up on frame of the goal for rating the probability of it turning into a goal, it shows a similar trend to xG.
The current cold streak looks like a bit of bad placement, not getting them on target but overall, he has tracked well with the goals compared to this estimate of his shooting quality.
Where is the issue?
Breaking things down in a bit more detail now, lets take a look at where the finishing issues might be coming from.
Here is how it looks with his shot from his feet and his head.
He is under in both, but with a bit more underperformance with his feet.
With his feet, he remains a player willing to use his weaker foot and so far this season it hasn’t really hurt him on the goal front.
His distribution of shots and their quality looks pretty good, he has a lot of shots of medium to high quality and unsurprisingly that is where the majority of his goals are coming from.
Breaking things down into slightly smaller groups and looking at the sum of the xG and the goals by groups it looks like this:
He is converting the really good chances at a high rate but the medium quality ones is where he is currently lagging behind his xG.
Final Thoughts
When you take a look at the shots he has taken this season, it is a pretty solid catalog.
There are some bad misses here but not a shocking number, there are some situations where he doesn’t maximize the quality of the shot with his touch but not a worrying amount. He has some well taken goals here to go along with some that he bungles in. It seems to overall match my expectations for him, where he gets into a lot of good shooting locations and when he is there he does a reasonable job.
This season he is below his xG but not by an amount that is particularly worrying and it would still be considered pretty normal, certainly not to an extent where you would worry that xG is a bad descriptor of how he does with the shots he takes.
Even for his career this holds true.
He has tracked xG really well, having some hot finishing and some cold finishing but generally staying in the range where you would expect to see for a player that is an average finisher.
There is almost never a good time for a striker to go cold in front of goal, but this is probably up there as one of the worst times it could have happened. It doesn’t help that he has had a massive burden put upon him with the injury situation at Arsenal but the numbers suggest that if Arsenal stick with him, he should bounce back into form.