Kai Havertz moving from Chelsea to Arsenal – why? And where would he fit in?

Arsenal have entered discussions to sign a 24-year-old from a London club — but it’s not the one you’re thinking about.

No, the official move for West Ham captain Declan Rice is still being formulated, and it is Chelsea’s German forward Kai Havertz for whom Arsenal have made an opening proposal.

It will have caught many off guard but it would be one of the most high-profile transfers of the summer if it were to be agreed.

Havertz joined Chelsea in the summer of 2020 and has made 139 appearances, scoring the winning goal in the Champions League final to cap off his debut season in England. It’s not the worst record for a player perceived to not have quite hit the heights expected since making the £75million ($95m) move from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer of 2020.

But where would he play? Is buying him the correct use of resources for Arsenal? How big a blow would this be for new Chelsea boss Mauricio Pochettino before he has even started at Stamford Bridge?

The Athletic’s Chelsea reporter Liam Twomey, Arsenal reporter Jordan Campbell and tactics writer Liam Tharme got together to thrash out what this transfer could potentially mean…

Jordan Campbell: The immediate thought is that it feels like a good fit. The stylish way he glides with the ball, the physical profile, the age. That all adds up, apart from one thing: where would he play?

Arsenal see Havertz as a quality player who can play several roles within their system and who offers different attributes to their existing forwards. He would also continue the club’s strategy of future-proofing the squad as he only just turned 24.

Manager Mikel Arteta has the challenge this summer of having to upgrade his team to close the gap on Manchester City even though he possesses a young team in which nine of the starting berths are pretty much nailed down.

Although there are sizeable funds available, it is only in midfield that there is clear headroom to improve so, given Arsenal’s more pressing requirements, going after a big-ticket forward — someone who is to an extent a case of untapped potential — is a surprise.

Liam Twomey: This is the thing! By the age of 24, most players are fully formed for better or worse, but Havertz has been miscast for such long stretches of his Chelsea career in dysfunctional attacking systems that the possibility of him scaling new heights at his next club cannot be discounted.

Even the current version of Havertz does a lot of things that elite clubs value. His technical level is really high, he has great instincts for finding pockets of space to receive and advance the ball, he is tactically responsible and he presses like a demon.

A fresh start and a change of scenery — even if it is only a move across London — could really be all he needs.

Campbell: Here was me thinking he would be someone who fitted into Pochettino’s plans…

Twomey: He’s already had enough new managers to last a lifetime!

Thomas Tuchel’s first six months at Chelsea, culminating in the 2021 Champions League triumph over Manchester City in Porto, probably contained the most consistent string of good performances in Havertz’s career in England. It is no coincidence that came in a similar role to what he was most familiar with at Leverkusen, as the right-sided No 10 in a 3-4-2-1.

From the moment Tuchel lost faith in Timo Werner and club-record signing Romelu Lukaku, things changed. Havertz was deployed as a full-time No 9, the role he has spent more time in than any other ever since. That means playing too much with his back to goal, battling big, physical centre-backs, and shouldering the burden of being the team’s primary scorer.

That hasn’t gone well for him or for Chelsea. The team’s attacking potency has nosedived over the past 18 months and so too has Havertz’s confidence in front of goal as he underperformed his expected goals (xG) the most of any Premier League player last season (-4.8). Last season’s massive statistical under-performance in front of goal is, however, also an aberration for Havertz’s career.

Given the increasing frequency with which Arsenal are facing low blocks, Havertz’s aerial ability at 6ft 4ins (1.93m) could be a valuable asset. Only Erling Haaland (12) has had more open-play headed big chances (defined by Opta as where a shooter can be reasonably expected to score), than Havertz (11) since the start of last season.

Liam Tharme: Tuchel called Havertz a “hybrid” between a No 9 and No 10.

“More or less, I’m a midfield player but I like to go into the box,” said Havertz in 2021. “When you have the ball, you have to adapt your position, and that’s my personality on the pitch.”

Arguably his best performance came in the Champions League round-of-16 second leg at home to Borussia Dortmund, where he operated as a No 10 in a 3-4-3 behind Raheem Sterling.

From here, Havertz was able to make his preferred half-space runs from deep, but also do most of his work facing the opposition goal rather than with his back to it. With two quick wingers in Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli, it is possible to imagine both dovetailing with the wingers making diagonal runs in behind.

There are parallels between Havertz and Arsenal’s January signing Leandro Trossard, another tactically flexible player who operates without a fixed position.

Campbell: This feels like the pertinent point. That he is so malleable that it isn’t obvious where he slots in is proof that it’s no longer about Arsenal’s ‘best XI’.

Top teams don’t have those set in stone anymore. With a potential 60-game season now they are back in the Champions League, it is about thinking of the team as a core group of 14 or 15 players who can start at any point without raising too many eyebrows.

Manchester City are the reference point: 14 of their squad played over half the available Premier League minutes last season. Pep Guardiola chooses four from Ruben Dias, John Stones, Manuel Akanji, Nathan Ake and Kyle Walker in defence, while in attack he usually chooses two from Jack Grealish, Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez, Julian Alvarez and Phil Foden to support Erling Halaand.

The similarity in quality but the variance of skill sets allows Guardiola to rotate and tweak. It eventually inspired the City manager to change the shape during the season and move Stones into a more advanced hybrid role.

Tharme: Arteta was one of only three managers — Marco Silva and Eddie Howe being the other two — to use the same formation in all 38 fixtures last season.

For the first time in Premier League history, Arsenal had four players (Aaron Ramsdale, Ben White, Gabriel and Saka) who featured in all 38 league games. Thirteen of Arsenal’s starting XIs were unchanged — the most in the league — as Arteta stuck with one system despite the injury to William Saliba weakening their defence.

That was most likely because, unlike City, the squad isn’t at the level yet to change several parts of the game plan without looking stunted. Arsenal’s Plan A is undoubtedly amongst the very best, but Plan B and Plan C need work. City never went more than two games in all competitions without a win last season, whereas Arsenal had two separate four-game runs where they failed to record a win.

Twomey: If Havertz does go, the reaction will be mixed. The goodwill from that goal in Porto will always endure, but it is tempered by the frequent frustration of watching him — and the rest of Chelsea’s attack — largely toil ever since.

Some supporters concluded long ago that Havertz simply isn’t as good as he was billed to be; that he is just not capable of being the level of difference-maker that Mohamed Salah has been at Liverpool, Kevin De Bruyne is at Manchester City or that Eden Hazard once was for Chelsea.

Others still cling to the flashes of elite talent and will feel huge exasperation that he has never been put in the best position to help him truly blossom at Stamford Bridge.

Havertz would leave a particularly strange legacy at Chelsea. Scoring the winning goals in a Champions League and Club World Cup finals is legitimate legend stuff.

But beneath those headline contributions will be a nagging sense of something unrealised.

 (Top photo: Harriet Lander – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)