Kai Havertz has made an under the radar improvement
After an early adaption period with Arsenal, he's been much improved and maybe even... good.
I don’t love that I feel like I am harping on the same topics over and over but sometimes things get started in the fanbase and I feel like I can’t just let it go.
One of those topics is Kai Havertz.
He is easily one of the most divisive transfers in recent memory (the other also might have come this window in David Raya) and with the team different than last season it is easy to point to the biggest thing that is making the team look different as the reason.
I think that is fair, I have had my share of criticism about him, it was just two months ago that I agreed with the sentiment that he wasn’t instantly living up to the expectations that came with his big fee and big wages (however not as big as many believe).
Kai Havertz isn't living up to expectations
When Arsenal were first linked with Havertz I had the following expectations about him, from my stats scouting post on him: I find Havertz’s statistical and overall profile intriguing. He has played all over the field over the last five years and what basically always sticks out is that he can do most things well while also adding a good volume of high-quality shots.
One of the things that I believe happens with the rating of transfers within the fanbase and the media is that the first impression of their play anchors the feeling for how it goes. Havertz came into Arsenal with the weight of a big fee, the familiarity of playing for a rival (and was also a disappointment relative to expectations), and replacing a player that had exceeded expectations. Oh, and he was also going to be switching positions and learning a complex positional system simultaneously.
The environment he was stepping into was tough.
This is what his stats looked like when I wrote that he wasn’t living up to expectations:
My ratings aren’t perfect (especially the further you get from the goal) but I do think that they are directionally right and put people in a ballpark for how they are performing. He was looking like a slightly above-average player (better than people were giving credit for) for his position but he was far from hitting the ground running.
In season, things are volatile, and like all things it is best to look are larger samples but it was not wrong to say at the time that Havertz was struggling to make an impact commensurate to the expectations he came into Arsenal with.
This is what he has been since I wrote that article:
This is pretty darn good.
I know people (including myself) will still have frustrations with his passing and it will probably never be better than slightly above average and he won’t play the line-breaking passes from midfield, but I don’t think that was why he was brought into this team at all.
He was brought into Arsenal to give a different problem for defenses in the box and to give Arsenal a target for the technical players to play off of. In that regard, he has looked to have started to adapt and improve within the team. The discussion from Arteta about how he had plans to use Jurrien Timber and Thomas Partey to make Arsenal more difficult to plan for and to play against.
"Everyone could see from day one what [Timeber] was going to bring to the team. The versatility, the quality, the leadership. And an ability that we did not have in the backline. It was a huge blow.
"It was a huge blow as well losing Thomas [Partey]. We had other plans as well with him, to become very versatile and unpredictable in our way of playing. We have not had them and that is difficult. We have them in the building, which is a joy. But we have not had them on the field as much as we wanted."
Losing both of these players in a few short weeks to start the year certainly didn’t help Arsenal or Havertz, who could have been introduced and acclimated differently at the start of his stint with Arsenal. This was exacerbated by not having the natural on-field positional rotation partner in Gabriel Jesus, who for me is a bit of the perfect ying (a forward who likes to play in midfield) to Havertz yang (a midfielder who likes to play in forward positions) for long stretches as well.
If he had started the season with this kind of performance or had been able to be introduced in a more controlled manner rather than being thrown in and forced to adapt and learn on the fly, I would think that the overall opinion of him would be different and for more people positive, but that isn’t always how things work out. This will probably always be a transfer that divides opinion but at least now we are in my view starting to see what the intention of the move was.
Week 21 (Second Half) Odds
Arsenal come back from their warm weather camp with a very winnable match. They are big favorites in my odds and by the bookmakers and for good reason. Crystal Palance are in a major funk and are a pretty mediocre team with the 16th-rated attack and 9th-rated defense.
They probably won’t make it easy for Arsenal to try and get the scoring back on track with a deep block that looks to frustrate, but hopefully, the rest and some time on the training ground will give Arsenal some fresh ideas.
Yee Haw! Lots of content coming this weekend.
I'm curious about how we've performed across the season so far on XG vs XGA. My perception is that our actuals underperform the expected numbers. Also I am curious about your thoughts whether this year's team is a regression from last year's mean, or if this year looks more like the mean and last year was an overperformance. Thanks!