It seems the dial has not really moved when it comes to Kai Havertz, despite scoring yesterday against Bournemouth.
Mikel Arteta is of the opinion that Havertz will now kick on after the confidence-boosting goal the German scored but that is not an opinion shared by former Newcastle United striker turned pundit, Alan Shearer.
While on Match of the Day duty last night, Shearer said
“When you look at the numbers – I mean there’s definitely a player in there – but for a player of his ability, it doesn’t match the numbers. They need to improve,”
”You know though that you have to pay £60-70m for a squad player nowadays. So he’s going to play his part but whether he’ll be a regular or not, I don’t think so.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
Havertz will have to do a lot more than convert a penalty kick to turn around the negative opinion that has built around him. Obviously, scoring will have helped his confidence but judging by comments on this website and those of pundits like Shearer, the German still has a lot of work to do.
Havertz does have talent otherwise Chelsea and then Arsenal would not have spent significant money to sign him, however, all that fans care about is performances on the pitch, hopefully, Havertz will step up now and show that he was worth the money Arsenal spent on him.
20 matches one goal on a penalty and you telling me that he now is worth 60M that’s a joke. His talent stayed in bundesliga maybe he just peaked early
It just doesn’t make sense that Arteta keeps giving opportunities to a player who is not psychologically prepared for the challenge whereas we have better performers on the bench.
Why is he so special to the manager when he is not helping the team?
We play with much more strain than last campaign after spending 200M+ only because of Havertz’s underwhelming performance. He’s not even a quarter of what Xhaka offered because he has neither a goal nor an assist, a forced penalty notwithstanding.
It was a nice touch from the lads to give him the chance to score but overall he was a massive disappointment once again .
Hopefully if Arteta feels the need to shoehorn in every game then the goal might give him abit more confidence because so far he’s been a complete waste of money and a lot of money at that .
On one side of the coin, it was nice. On the other side it was cringe worthy. Would Arteta/Arsenal do the same for every player? Was it a sensible/proper thing to do? Was it disrespectful? If it triggers a lightning bolt in Haverz performances, maybe we can do it for all players struggling. We will all see, in the next few games, if it was an experiment that worked. But like you said, he was bang average again in the game.
It’s not like Xhaka was a prolific goalscorer, he was more needed for his accurate passing and his physical presence in midfield. Can Havertz reach similar levels to GX, Defensively, I think he could surpass him and I believe with a year under his belt he could outperform his forward numbers too, That’ll be the aim -to replace Xhaka and it’s not to be a second No10 on the pitch