Kai Havertz has come a long, long way since leaving Leverkusen to join Chelsea, enduring a half-dozen managers in three seasons, and becoming yet another overpaid Chelsea reject by joining Arsenal. The ground is littered with such castaways, from Čech to Willian to Luiz to Jorginho; the narrative was that Chelsea had once again hood-winked us. Throw in their signings of Mudryk and Caicedo from under our noses, and, well, the track record speaks for itself…or does it? Havertz has to join the list as one of the signings of the season. What’s more, he seems to actually enjoy playing for this club.
Havertz, of course, endured a rocky start to his time here, and he must surely be the first player to struggle to adjust to playing for this club. Why, I can’t think of a single instance of us signing a high-profile player only for him to disappoint early on only to thrill us later. For no apparent reason, I’d like to take a moment to mention that Dennis Bergkamp is my favourite Gunner/Gooner.
Those who lampooned us for signing Havertz had plenty of material to work with in the early stages of the season. His first goal didn’t come until his seventh match, and that was a pen against Bournemouth when we were already up 2-0. Long story short, the idea that we’d been hoodwinked into signing a flop was gaining momentum.
Howver, fast-forward to the end of the season and this final, possibly title-defining match against Everton. At halftime, the lads had to know that Man City would defeat West Ham, rendering any outcome we could wrest from Everton all but meaningless. Still, despite the futility of it all, Havertz scored a dramatic late winner thanks to Ødegaard’s crafty (?) dummy pass.
Here’s what matters even in the wake of a goal that mattered nought: Havertz’s reaction. You might expect a player who’d just scored a vital, result-changing goal to celebrate. Havertz’s reaction was almost funereal. He scored and trotted back to his position with a haunted, dejected look on his face as if he knew that the goal—his 13th of the Prem campaign—mattered not one whit.
He was right.
Maybe he was lamenting the wasted chances from the first half of the season. Maybe he was lamenting other opportunities that he’d spurned in the second half after he’d come to life as a false-nine. Who knows?
Whatever his internal monologue was at that point, it was at that point that he became a Gooner—someone who seems to truly embrace this club. His hunger and his disappointment are a reflection of our own. Still, it would be tempting to read all of this as a kind of kindred feeling among shell-shocked survivors of some traumatic experience.
Instead, let’s look at what Havertz seems to actually embody. He’s a winner. Three years at a shambolic Chelsea club suppressed that. Along similar lines, we at the Arsenal have learned to suppress or at least downplay our winning character. Havertz’s arrival may just usher in a new age, a new attitude, a new aspiration. Yes, RIce has been amazing, but that was expected. Havertz has exceeded all expectations, just as this squad as a whole came agonisingly close to doing.
We’re long past the era during which a player devotes his entire career from start to finish to one club, especially at the levels to which we aspire. However, in Havertz, we might just have found a player who sees his time at this club as more than just a weekly paycheck.
Havertz’s hunger bodes well for seasons to come. Surely, he’s not the only who’s haunted at how close we’d come to winning the Prem. Surely, he and Saka and Saliba and Ødegaard and Rice and various others watched Man City’s celebrations. Surely, they’d thought to themselves, “if only…”
The 2023-24 season begins. Those already in this squad surely feel a keening hunger to oust Man City once and for all. Havertz showed us that hunger in his reaction to scoring that goal against Everton—good, yes, but not nearly good enough.
That perhaps is the story of our season: good, but not nearly good enough. By the same token, the hunger and the disappointment that emanated from Havertz after he scored that winner had to feel very, very familiar, and I hope that it engenders similar feelings in just a few months’ time.
We’ve pushed Man City to the very edge of success. We’re gathering strength and experience. Ask Kai. He knows.
