Why Arsenal's attack needs Kai Havertz to work

The numbers show Arsenal's key players perform significantly better when Havertz is on the pitch

Kai Havertz’s late intervention in Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Chelsea in the League Cup on Tuesday night couldn’t have been better. In a match that had offered very little attacking intent from either side, it was particularly notable to fans and critics alike that Mikel Arteta’s team lacked an obvious attacking edge. Gabriel Martinelli and Noni Madueke huffed and puffed on either wing while Viktor Gyökeres continued to look jarringly out of sync with his team mates. It was a game that was crying out for Havertz and he duly came on and scored the goal to settle the nerves, if not necessarily the tie.

Plenty has been written and said about Gyökeres and his struggles in North London, so I don’t feel any particular urge to add to the poor man’s misery. But while I’m sure he remains confident that he will eventually click into gear with Arsenal, even he must be wondering whether the opportunity to do exactly that has come and gone, now that Havertz has returned to Arteta’s squad after a lengthy injury. Because not only is the German international Arsenal’s best goalscoring talent, but he also significantly improves the players around him. And that’s ultimately all that will matter between now and the end of the season.

The manner in which Havertz has come on leaps and bounds since his poorly received €75 million move from Chelsea in 2023 is nothing short of remarkable. First tasked with playing as a box-to-box midfielder, the former Bayer Leverkusen star has slowly but surely developed into an expert in the final third for Arsenal. Arteta still often plays him as a No.10 or on either wing, but to the surprise of Arsenal fans (and many back in Germany) he does seem to genuinely thrive as a centre forward for the North London club.

For example, when we filter all of Havertz’s game time in the Premier League down to just the games he played as a striker, we find that the 26-year-old forward currently averages 0.49 goals and 0.33 assists per 90 minutes of league football. That’s a very impressive return for the Aachen-born talent and considerably better than Gabriel Jesus’ 0.70 goals and assists per 90 and, to no surprise, more than double Gyökeres’ 0.37 goal contributions per 90 in the English top-flight for Arsenal. In fact, as we can see in the graph above, Havertz not only tends to create more goals than Arsenal’s other strikers but also outscores them too. There’s really no contest here.

But we’re not just talking about a player that walks into Arteta’s squad and steals all the glory. What’s really fascinating about Havertz’s Arsenal form is that he clearly improves the players around him in attack and that’s clear for all to see when we look at the league stats of Bukayo Saka and Martin Ødegaard.

Let’s start with the Norwegian playmaker. Ødegaard has been far from his best this season, largely due to injury and simply looking far more jaded than usual but it’ll be interesting to see if he enjoys an uptick in form with Havertz back in the squad. Since the towering German talent joined Arsenal, Ødegaard’s form has varied wildly depending on whether Havertz is playing alongside him. So much so that without the German, Ødegaard has averaged 0.37 goals or assists per 90 in the Premier League but with Havertz on the pitch alongside the blonde-haired playmaker, his average has shot up by 43 percent to 0.53 goals and assists per 90.

The same can certainly be said for Saka. The England international is currently averaging his lowest goals and assists per 90 in the Premier League since 2021 and that’s in no small part due to Havertz missing almost the entire league campaign up until now. Much like Ødegaard, Saka’s career goal contributions average stands at a perfectly respectable 0.51 per 90 in the Premier League without Havertz. But when we then isolate Saka’s form when the German forward is alongside him on the pitch, we see that number almost double to 0.91 goals and assists per 90.

None of this is to say that Havertz is some magician that can suddenly get the best out of Saka and Ødegaard, but it perhaps explains why Gyökeres has had such a tough time syncing up with his team mates when they’re clearly so attuned to thriving alongside another No.9 in Havertz who has a very different style of play from his Swedish counterpart.

Either way, this season is just about getting over the line for Arsenal and in that regard Havertz’s return couldn’t have come at a better time. The German international is Arteta’s best goalscorer and clearly gets the best out of the club’s key attacking talents. And that should be a welcomed boost for the North London club as they approach the final stretch of this Premier League title race.