Kai Havertz- An Enigma
I’ve been away. I’ve been inconsistent. I acknowledge it. It’s time to pattern up.
I started writing blogs on medium with the goal of providing an in-depth game analysis for each Arsenal matches, every game week. By my GW10 article I realized, though I was explaining the intricacies of the game, a lot of it was sort of being regurgitated and it felt that I was not making a real difference in helping people see the beautiful from my perspective. So back to drawing board, I had to refocus and start again from square one. This also coupled well with my new found understanding of Arteta’s masterplan for Arsenal. (This doesn’t discount me being lazy btw😛)
Here on, I will write articles with a specific focus and explain it even more thoroughly. Topics could range from a player specific article(such as this) or a team dynamics focused article. While I will try to be consistent, but new articles will come at their own pace, no rushing. Trust me, it’ll be fun.
No more yapping about me, let’s focus on today’s topic- KAI HAVERTZ
Mikel Arteta is a crazy man. He had the privilege to learn under some extra ordinary managers such as Moyes, Wenger, Guardiola. Another important thing to remember that Mikel was a La Masia player which in itself helps develop a player’s potential to the max. All these things coupled with Arteta’s eagerness to learn and his sheer football knowledge makes him a top manager.
Mikel’s football plans for Arsenal are hard to grasp and it often sees him sign players for whom the general consensus is not good. It was the same with Ben White, Aaron Ramsdale, Jorginho and now Havertz. Arsenal payed a whooping 65m pounds for Havertz which was largely considered a poor deal. I remember saying to a friend that this was Arteta’s biggest gamble since signing Ramsdale from The Championship. Even I could not possibly imagine what Arteta’s plan was for Kai but nevertheless I had complete faith in my gaffer, by December I was convinced that Havertz was the right player for us.
Kai Havertz is an interesting player. In his Bayer Leverkusen days he seemed like a top prospect, amassing interest from top European club around the world. He eventually ended up at Chelsea. This move didn’t turn out to be great as his Premier League campaign with Chelsea have been nothing short of subpar to say the least given his quality and uniqueness of his profile.
Now, Kai finds himself at Arsenal with glimmers and flashes of him unlocking his true potential. Arteta took a big gamble signing and this article is my take on explaining why it might pay off.
Havertz during his Arsenal tenure has largely occupied the LCM role which was left vacant, after the departure of Granit Xhaka in the summer. Is this the role Arteta envisioned him to cover? Is he a like for like replacement for Xhaka?Answer to those questions is “sorta”.
Kai excels at a lot of things- winning duels, running through the channels, shadowing the centre forward, being an outlet while playing over opposition teams, crashing the opponent’s box, overloading the midfield if necessary. Now whom does these attribute belong to? A midfielder? Or a striker? Well, I’d say both but the real answer is it’s time to break free from positional play and Mikel Arteta is damn well doing it.
Arteta’s ideal Arsenal
Above is an acute representation of Mikel’s future vision for Arsenal. I’m planning to do an extremely detailed article about this in the coming weeks so stay tuned. For the time being let us consider the Raumdeuter role in the above illustration which is also the exact role of Havertz in this Arsenal side.
What is a raumdeuter you ask? Think of Thomas Müller, he’s the best raumdeuter and a great focal point to understand the role. Crashing the point without anyone marking, stealthily roaming around the pitch like a shadow and timing the runs across channels, half-spaces or wide like a shadow.One more great example was Delle Alli during his early Spurs days. Space Invaders. Creative players but they are not tasked with dictating the attack progressions of a team. Players like these are very difficult to contain and are a very unique profile in this ever changing game of football. Never judge a raumdeuter by their sheer G/A not to say that they don’t provide it but to sum it up- Don’t get too high as and well things are going great and don’t dwell too low when things don’t seem to be working out.
Havertz for Arsenal
On paper Havertz’s position for majority of his Arsenal career has been at LCM and sometimes at LCM but interestingly enough on both type of occassion he has occupied nearly identical spaces. See the representation below —
In this game Havertz’s on paper position was that of a striker but as a Raumdeuter he has a variety of responsibilities.Let us consider the example of Arsenal scoring their first goal vs Liverpool at The Emirates
Linking up deep
Here, Kai drops deep to link up with Jorginho while Zinchenko stays high just behind Martinelli.
Kai receives the ball which draws in Gomez and freeing up Zinchenko who is sent on the run by Gabriel after receiving the return ball from Havertz.
Zinchenko insteads inverts and passes onto Odegaard who sets the ball on the plate for Kai to run through. Now let’s focus on Kai’s impact in this sequence. Kai, intially dropped deep and to perform a one-two with Jorginho before running through the channel again beign effectively found by Odegaard and attack the space left behind. Throughout the sequence Kai was hardly marked bar the time he drop deep where he was followed closely by Gomez.
Another thing to notice is Liverpool’s defensive shape — the sort of an ‘Y’ structure. Initially Havertz dropping deep left the Liverpool CBs with no one to mark all while Arsenal players were luring the remaining Liverpool players into their box. Look at the line between VVD and Odegaard, VVD had the option to press Ode or stay deep, but such is the intricacy of tactics that 9/10 the CB will jump on the receiving player and leaving empty space behind. And you guessed it Havertz was there to exploit the empty space left behind. So, to conclude irrespective of his starting position — Havertz occupies the same space in the team.
Backpost Sauvant
Consider the above illustration — Havertz at the far post asking for Saka to cross the ball. Here, interestingly Rice is playing as the ST while Havertz as SS or Second/Shadow Striker(more on this below) is waiting at the far post. This highlights another top tier skill of a raumdeuter- “Back post sauvant”
Havertz is pretty tall and can be effectively used as an outlet or someone to look for at the backpost while attempting a cross. As a SS he moves eerily silently between the lines often times being unmarked and providing an interesting new dynamic to Arsenal which was not present last season.
The Outlet/Enabler
Arsenal buildup has varied a lot under Arteta’s reign. However at the beginning of season one noticeable change was the emphasis on playing it high right from the kick — off . Now this has a very visible tradeoff as Arsenal looked clunky and very worse off creatively at the start of the season. This seemed a far cry from Arsenal of the previous season. Let us understand why —
Mikel was experimenting with the idea of bypassing the 2nd phase of buildup and put the ball straight from the buildup to the final third.
Now, once the ball is launched high into the final third, Mikel envisions the ST or Raumdeuter to win the ball and unlock space for other players to run behind. This is exactly what Havertz does brilliantly. Arsenal largely consisted of players who can gobble up the second balls and launch their attack effectively. However, their stats for winning the first balls weren’t great. This is another dimension which is provided by Havertz.
This can be accomplished by forming a sort of sideways Y shape -
This shape enables runners like Martinelli, ESR to attack the FBs and the effective time to attack is greatly reduced. Another emphasis to play less in the central areas especially during the build-up phase, to avoid transitions and well speed up the attack as well. To sum it up, Arsenal of last season were good in winning the second-balls, while this season with Havertz and Rice the dynamic is such that Arsenal for most part retain the first-balls, second-balls and third-balls and so on….
Duel Spartan
Havertz’s threat is just more than his positioning or his movement. He is an excellent duel winner as in evident in the graphic above. Havertz consistently creates chaos in the opposition half. Even if he loses the duel he troubles the opposition player enough that Arsenal can either attack the space by winning the second-ball or recycle possesion. He lost the highest number of duels vs Liverpool(18) yet as you can see above his value is immense. He has performed exceptionally well against a plethora of different CBs and is one of the most trusted player at Arsenal when it comes to winning duels.
Dwelling in the Shadows
Kai is tasked with being the CAM and CF both at the same time irrespective of his starting position. Above I mentioned SS(Shadow/Second striker) which simply means someone who dovetails the main ST all while floating across the pitch and moving quietly often finding themselves alone and unmarked. Arsenal already had such a player and he was one of the legends of the team. DENNIS BERGKAMP. I know, I know that is a very farfetched thing to say and I don’t blame you for your reaction. But please spend some time watching clips of Bergkamp and try to compare it what I have explained upto now about Havertz. You need to understand it is not supposed to be a like for like comparison but more of a profile comparison. One more interesting comparison to Kai is Marouane Fellaini in his Everton days.
Unpolished Diamond
So Havertz can -
- Make deep runs at any time.
- Shadow the ST.
- Become the main outlet while playing from the back all while facing a team pressing in man-to-man fashion.
- Overload the midfield if and when needed.
- Crash the box at the far post.
Now things can always get better as Kai even with his unique movements has been a little disappointing in front of the goal, which in recent times as improved greatly however for Arsenal’s title charge it is of the utmost importance that he is fully firing and performing well.
Another talk which I want to conclude is about Kai being a CF/LCM all these will be answered as and when Timber returns coupled with Partey’s reemergence. We will finally get to see Mikel’s ideal approach for this season, maybe I’ll do a article for that as well(Hint : He learnt it from David Moyes ;) )
Conclusion
I tried to be as detailed as possible but I agree that there is a lot more than I can cover thus I’m really interested in hearing everyone’s thoughts. As I’m writing this Arsenal are gearing up to face Manchester City at The Etihad as we gear towards the Title Run-In. Let’s hope the team gives their all and I’ll be back soon with another article soon(hopefully :))
To my fellow culer’s I’ve not forgotten about you, will be writing something special for Xavi as well. Stay tuned.
