How Kai Havertz became pivotal to Arsenal’s title charge

Jorginho setting up Kai Havertz for a goal, for Arsenal—now there’s a combination you might not have expected to see.

Travel back in time to September and tell the fans this pairing just iced a win at Brighton that leaves them top of the Premier League with seven games to play and you would be met with understandably blank, confused looks. Back then, there was simply no place in the script for these players combining, thriving and driving the Gunners forward. 

But scripts change. It seems we too easily forget this, despite acknowledging it as a universal truth. In a football season, what works in September likely will not work in April; it takes a whole squad—not a team, not a first XI—to win a title. A whole squad. 

Jorginho and Havertz are this season’s ultimate reminder of this. The former played just 386 league minutes in the first half of the season, yet now stands a key player; the latter started the campaign struggling in central midfield, yet has banked five goals and four assists as a striker in the last two months. 

As a duo, they’ve transformed an already excellent Arsenal side, kicking it on another imperious level, and they’ve done so with beaming smiles on their faces. 

“Jorgi is a player who I feel like he looks at me or I look at him and we both know what is going to happen next,” Havertz said last weekend. “He’s one of the best players I’ve played with because he knows my movements, I know his passing and which ideas he has in his mind.”
Sharing a spell at Chelsea certainly helps the relationship, but it still needed to be imprinted on a new environment—one where Martin Odegaard reigns supreme, and where Bukayo Saka is the golden boy. That can be a difficult task, but since the turn of the year it’s been incorporated without taking away from what originally made the side so good. 

These developments have had drastic knock-on effects elsewhere, most notably to Gabriel Jesus and Declan Rice. Jesus has been stuck on the fringes for months, tagging in to play anywhere across the front line when needed (but vying with Leandro Trossard to do so), while Rice has been shifted from the base of midfield to a true box-to-box No. 8 role, which really did not seem to be the plan last summer. 

But as we sit here in April, an Arsenal XI without Havertz up front and Jorginho at the base of midfield is borderline unimaginable. It’s amazing how quickly the dynamics of a team can change. 

🗣️ “In England he has been best as a No 9!”

🎙️ @stighefootball discusses Kai Havertz’s recent upturn in form as a striker for Arsenal.

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— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) March 29, 2024

Havertz is chasing his best-ever season, in any division, in terms of goals and assists. He’s currently on 14, which is a Premier League best, and the mark he’s aiming for is 2018-19’s total of 20, with Bayer Leverkusen. He’s more than those figures, though—as he is often at pains to point out—with his hold-up play and runs off the ball really unlocking another level in this Arsenal attack. 

Again, this was unthinkable back in September, as we watched not only a slow, laboured Havertz trundle around in midfield and struggle to assert himself on games, but Jesus felt integral to the team’s attack—zipping around, linking play and opening up so many spaces for Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli to utilise. 

Havertz has opened space for Saka and Martinelli (and Odegaard) in different ways, allowing them to continue to thrive in conjunction with he and Jorginho. Despite no small amount of change, the whole thing just hums along so consistently regardless. 

Manager Mikel Arteta is the architect of all of this. His players speak glowingly of him—Havertz has claimed he has never worked with a more detail-oriented manager—as he’s created an environment that anyone can come to the fore in. He’s also shown willingness to change and compromise on his initial ideas, which is something some managers simply refuse to do. 

The result? A title charge and a shot at the Champions League, with a team that scores the most, concedes the fewest, and has seen 17 different players clock 500 minutes or more in the league. A true group effort; so much more than just a best XI.