Former Arsenal player Ray Parlour has expressed his uncertainty regarding Arsenal’s decision to sign Kai Havertz, suggesting that the club should have prioritised a striker instead.
While Arsenal does have strikers in their squad, Parlour believes they lack a prolific goal scorer who can consistently deliver around 25 goals per season.
Parlour suggests that having a player with such goal-scoring prowess in their ranks last season could have potentially propelled Arsenal to a league title. Consequently, fans were hopeful that the club would target a high-profile striker in the current transfer window to address this need.
However, Arsenal’s acquisition of Havertz, who has predominantly played as a forward for Chelsea in recent seasons, has left some observers puzzled and Parlour is one of them.
He said on Talk Sport:
‘Havertz was a bit of a shock, because I thought they needed an out-and-out striker.
‘[Gabriel] Jesus is there, Eddie Nketiah has done great when he’s come in but I thought they needed one more top quality striker.
‘But they went for Havertz and spent a lot of money on him. Edu and Mikel Arteta must see something in him.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
Arteta has mostly signed players that did well at the Emirates and we still have to trust his judgement on Havertz.
It remains unclear why he has added the German to the group, but when the season starts, we will get a clearer picture.
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The boss understans what he is doing, so I’m supporting him 100💯.
The true value of the last campaign maybe is in the highlights to the gaffer exactly where we are short and to use that knowledge to go one step further in the next campaign.
He has seen we lack quality squad depth overall, but also in key areas.
While the variety of forwards mean we can weather the loss of Jesus, it doesn’t look like we can do similar with Martin Odegaard and Saliba.
Having learned of Real Madrid intrest in Havertz and their subsequent last minute attempt to hijack his service has only strengthen my resolve in the German.
We also need another powerful midfielder with uncertainty surrounding Xhaka and Partey.
Given Kai Havertz’s time at Chelsea, I think it is fair to question this move, especially at the price Arsenal paid for him.
In his defence no one at Chelsea played well last season and even the season before they were not that great – but Kovacic has been sold and Mount is heavily linked elsewhere so are they bad players?
Havertz will be leaving a club that is low on confidence and high on uncertainty and joining a club that is high in confidence (despite the fall away towards the end of the season) with a real direction and ambition.
I understand the scepticism. but it was Arteta and Edu who valued him at that price, and they obviously see something there – I just hope he is not a dud..
Chelsea played Havertz out of his natural position. One thing he definitely is not, is a striker, and he won’t be played as one with us.
We all knew we needed technicality with even more of physicality in that midfield.
A player that is technical, fast and yet tough to physically bully.
Performance against some big teams and especially towards the end of last season show this is what we need.
However, Arteta obviously has other ideas.
We wait to see.
I also think we should have gone for an out and out striker, Ivan Toni comes to mind. Havertz is good and talented and will do well in the midfield but we also need a striker to compete/rotate with Jesus. That said, Arteta knows what he is doing and probably the idea is to get goals from all quarters instead of relying on one individual.
Ivan Toney has ongoing issues which do not make him a viable option at the moment. Whilst there are good strikers around Europe and elsewhere it is extremely difficult to identify a striker that would guarantee the kind of goals output we need or want Any of the top strikers in Europe is likely to cost well in excess of £100m.
Maybe we offered 65m so we could get him quickly so we go in hard and fast acting as a big club does…. might not just be the Rice signing making us look aggressive in the market, we mean business!