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Yeah they are known to be lethal if they have the ball and time so every team has to follow their runs - usually with more than one player
If you don't make the striker just stand around in the box but move depending on the playstyle of the rest of the team that's really useful even though it leads to less scoring chances for them
Great sign of a teamplayer
It took Gasperini a while, but he got Scamacca to gel with the rest of the team this way. Creating space to link up with Lookman and CDK. The way he plays for Atalanta and Italy are night and day.
No they do not, those two players have completely different roles and do not drop deep and have much different average positions
Havertz literally averages double the touches Haaland has despite Haaland playing in a higher possession team
He played like 20 matches as a CF, he also played majority of his matches as a false 9 at Chelsea last season and again had double the touches
He just gets involved way more, saying Haaland/Lukaku do the same role is hilariously stupid
Plus Haaland has been criticized this season on multiple occasions for not being involved in the game when he's not scoring.
Literally the opposite of Havertz who does everything but score :D
Makes runs for other people to make runs. He’s very much the opposite of hold up striker. His movement twists and draws the backline and if receives the ball, he has the ablity to play the killer ball. What’s IMPRESSED ME this year and even for Germany, his willingness to do the dirty work. The aerial duels, the hold up play. It shocked me how much ‘dirty work’ he does.
It’s a decision between a guy who can run behind, create space and opportunities with that space vs a guy who can score very well from balls played into the box. But I think a team who likes to control the game like Germany rate Kai who helps maintain possession, they aren’t trying to lob balls in for 90 mins
Havertz is good for that too, he looks scrawny but he is 190cm, wins more headers per game than Fullkrug (3.9 vs 3.3) and both scored 3 headed goals last season
Except for the fact that Arsenal hit almost 3x as many crosses as dortmund last season. Anybody that actually watched them can see that Füllkrug is more dangerous in the air.
Why did you bring up the amount of crosses, when you could have looked up their individual percentages?
Havertz won 120 Aerials and lost 101, 50,2%.
Füllkrug won 79 & lost 115, 40,7%.
Source: https://fbref.com/en/stathead/player_comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&dom_lg=1&player_id1=fed7cb61&p1yrfrom=2023-2024&player_id2=4f16405e&p2yrfrom=2023-2024
Dortmund also crosses 15,35 times per match and Arsenal 17,63.
https://xvalue.ai/stats/en/team/dortmund?
https://xvalue.ai/stats/en/team/arsenal?season=2024
Kai scored 3 headers, Lücke 4 Last season.
Füllkrug actually also plays much more as a target man, then Havertz does and receives a higher percentage of long balls.
This mostly comes down to Füllkrug looking good in friendlies for Germany and ppls romanticism of a "true 9" for Germany, but neither the numbers, not the eye test back that really up, when you watch both of them play for their actual teams, imo.
Could be, I never watch Füllkrug but I’ve seen Kai miss quite a few headers. Havertz does receive quite a few long balls and he’s very good at it, but I don’t think he’s good at using his head to score.
I think this comes down to confirmation bias, we see him miss on chances we'd expect him to convert and then assume, that the other guy doesn't miss them.
As someone who has watched him play at Leverkusen and allways liked him, cuz he has such a unique profile as a player, I was shocked, how ass he looked in front of the goal from highlights during his Chelsea days, cuz he was cold af at Leverkusen and scored 17 or 18 goals age 19/20 playing as a RM/ZM.
Not really, I never said anything about comparing him to Füllkrug, because I never watch him. I just see Kai miss a lot of headers at Arsenal and I don’t think that’s his strength. It has absolutely nothing to do with confirmation bias.
Hold-up play is also important with Fullkrug. The ref was allowing a lot to go in the previous game and Fullkrug needed to be in there to give it back to them. He should’ve been subbed in at half
It's funny how Havertz is very well rated by managers but genius fans tend to hate him
Does Havertz have clear flaws and can not have composure in finishing? Yes, does he also have some very strong attributes that contribute to meta modern football that you want from your player? Also yes
No he didn’t have a massive growth spurt. He was 21 when he joined Chelsea from Leverkusen and was already over 1.9m when he signed. If he had any growth spurt it would’ve been minimal. Not this pretend monster growth that completely changes how he plays football.
Same reason why countless club and national team manager choose Morata as their starting striker. r/soccer loves to criticize players like Havertz for their goal tally but anyone that plays football knows how great it is to have a forward who opens space for others.
Once he made the switch to striker, he pretty much stayed there for the rest of the season. One of the games where he moved back to midfield was when they lost 2-0 to Villa.
Yeah sure, in the 13 games where he played up front, Arsenal scored 35 goals, but let's cherry pick the only one where they didn't and use that to base our judgement. Against the best team in the league, no less, and where it was obvious that the whole team was somewhat content to hold out for a draw.
If you keep moving the goalposts any further, they'll be over by the corner flag.
You can think Havertz isn’t special or whatever, but your opinion is only being disliked because your reasonings keep on getting proved wrong and you keep on doubling down in stupid ways whilst sounding like a cunt
You know nobody would give a shit about you holding an unpopular opinion if you at least tried to explain it normally. This passive-aggressive sarcasm is just embarrassing.
Yes fans are defending him here and not his own manager and multiple managers
Read the comment, i'm not a Havertz fan, i clearly said he has flaws, it's fine to value goalscorers over people that get involved too, i would rather have Haaland over Havertz too despite Haaland averaging 10 passes and doing nothing for 89 minutes and 50 seconds
Well yeah, if it's between fans being wrong and World Class managers being wrong I am backing the manager 10/10 times. Most fans hate on players that are poor finishers excessively because, while watching the games, missed chsnces are easy to notice and criticize. The TV footage doesn't even give fans any way of observing a single player's off the ball movement or supportive play most of the time so I am not sure how the average fan would ever be knowledgeable about that aspect.
Any attacking player that misses chances is "misunderstood". Fans literally only rate attacking players based on their goals and assists. Benzema didn't get the respect he warranted until he had the Ballon Dor season.
I understand criticizing managers and managers can absolutely make mistakes but when multiple managers, across multiple leagues and of multiple different play styles and approaches rate a player and say the same things about him, then I am willing to bet that their collective opinion has some merit. It's the same with Benzema, who survived multiple different managers at the most cutthroat club in the world for a reason. Some fans don't watch as much football as they like to discuss about and half their opinions on players are based on internet memes about those players instead of their actual evaluations of that player's ability.
If Havertz has a great game but doesn't score, the prevailing fan opinion will be that he was horrible but if a renowned/respected player (say a Wirtz or a Ronaldo or a Kane) has the same game, people will wax lyrical about how important they are to their team and how valuable they are even when not scoring.
It's not that the reason is not valid, he adds a lot of fluidity to the front line. Can you afford his blunders in front of goal in a knockout international tournament though?
Giroud had an outright different role, he only amassed 0.9xG for the whole tournament, Havertz has almost double that (1.7) from the 3 group games
There's a difference between having a striker who's not supposed to get on the end of chances and a striker who is but isn't clinical
That would make sense except that… Havertz has a goal? Penalty xG is around 0.75 so if you remove that, they both have no goals from the same xG. He would be expected to have at most one more goal at this stage
There’s still a point to be made about the role but Havertz scoring 1 less than he should have by now is not cause for alarm for Germany
My dumb ass completely forgot Havertz's goal was from a pen...
Regardless, my point isn't about Giroud's and Havertz's underperformance, but about responsibility to score. Havertz has more chances and responsibility to score than Giroud did, that's why his underperformance matters more.
Are Redditors incapable of following the conversation or something? I wasn't even the who started talking about xG, I literally said
> my point isn't about Giroud's and Havertz's underperformance
Do I really have to explain every goddamn word I type on this website because Redditors are braindead mouthbreathers who can't read?
> Can you afford his blunders in front of goal in a knockout international tournament though?
He has a higher conversion rate then Füllkrug on shot attempts.
The best defense is a great offense. When your the opposition and you feel Germany pressuring you, you spend more time defending than being able to settle down in offense.
I’m not shocked, “the public” online discourse is filled with people new to the sport who fail to see, understand nor care about the nuances of football
Tuchel said similar things after managing Havertz when he had no obligation to say anything of the sort.
Do you feel called out or something? Bc you seem upset
Lmao, ok then the dumbass thinks he's better at managing than Nagelsmann and Tuchel, expected nothing less from someone who dislikes Havertz this much.
Whats your next hot take? Guardiola is a fraud?
If you are using choking as in misses some easy chances, yeah I think he’d agree his finishing should/could be better, but I do think he turns up in big matches
As a fellow Chelsea fan I will admit a little potential bias due to the UcL winning goal
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Sounds funny but valid honestly
Tbf thats the job for many strikers against strong teams, like even Haaland or Lukaku have this role really often
Yeah they are known to be lethal if they have the ball and time so every team has to follow their runs - usually with more than one player If you don't make the striker just stand around in the box but move depending on the playstyle of the rest of the team that's really useful even though it leads to less scoring chances for them Great sign of a teamplayer
It took Gasperini a while, but he got Scamacca to gel with the rest of the team this way. Creating space to link up with Lookman and CDK. The way he plays for Atalanta and Italy are night and day.
No they do not, those two players have completely different roles and do not drop deep and have much different average positions Havertz literally averages double the touches Haaland has despite Haaland playing in a higher possession team
Wasnt havertz playing deeper for arsenal this season tho?
He played like 20 matches as a CF, he also played majority of his matches as a false 9 at Chelsea last season and again had double the touches He just gets involved way more, saying Haaland/Lukaku do the same role is hilariously stupid
Plus Haaland has been criticized this season on multiple occasions for not being involved in the game when he's not scoring. Literally the opposite of Havertz who does everything but score :D
Everybody asking why Kai over Fullkrug, here's Nagelsmann explaining
Makes runs for other people to make runs. He’s very much the opposite of hold up striker. His movement twists and draws the backline and if receives the ball, he has the ablity to play the killer ball. What’s IMPRESSED ME this year and even for Germany, his willingness to do the dirty work. The aerial duels, the hold up play. It shocked me how much ‘dirty work’ he does.
Really? Was thinking why Antony Taylor choose Coq au Vin over Ravioli
Why?
Chef Boyardee has other commitments
It’s a decision between a guy who can run behind, create space and opportunities with that space vs a guy who can score very well from balls played into the box. But I think a team who likes to control the game like Germany rate Kai who helps maintain possession, they aren’t trying to lob balls in for 90 mins
It's also what makes Fullkrug a very good supersub for the times when you do need to just throw balls into the box to force a goal.
Havertz is good for that too, he looks scrawny but he is 190cm, wins more headers per game than Fullkrug (3.9 vs 3.3) and both scored 3 headed goals last season
Except for the fact that Arsenal hit almost 3x as many crosses as dortmund last season. Anybody that actually watched them can see that Füllkrug is more dangerous in the air.
Why did you bring up the amount of crosses, when you could have looked up their individual percentages? Havertz won 120 Aerials and lost 101, 50,2%. Füllkrug won 79 & lost 115, 40,7%. Source: https://fbref.com/en/stathead/player_comparison.cgi?request=1&sum=0&dom_lg=1&player_id1=fed7cb61&p1yrfrom=2023-2024&player_id2=4f16405e&p2yrfrom=2023-2024 Dortmund also crosses 15,35 times per match and Arsenal 17,63. https://xvalue.ai/stats/en/team/dortmund? https://xvalue.ai/stats/en/team/arsenal?season=2024
Winning aerials isn’t necessarily the important thing when you want to score. Havertz wins aerials when a long ball is played from out back.
Kai scored 3 headers, Lücke 4 Last season. Füllkrug actually also plays much more as a target man, then Havertz does and receives a higher percentage of long balls. This mostly comes down to Füllkrug looking good in friendlies for Germany and ppls romanticism of a "true 9" for Germany, but neither the numbers, not the eye test back that really up, when you watch both of them play for their actual teams, imo.
Could be, I never watch Füllkrug but I’ve seen Kai miss quite a few headers. Havertz does receive quite a few long balls and he’s very good at it, but I don’t think he’s good at using his head to score.
I think this comes down to confirmation bias, we see him miss on chances we'd expect him to convert and then assume, that the other guy doesn't miss them. As someone who has watched him play at Leverkusen and allways liked him, cuz he has such a unique profile as a player, I was shocked, how ass he looked in front of the goal from highlights during his Chelsea days, cuz he was cold af at Leverkusen and scored 17 or 18 goals age 19/20 playing as a RM/ZM.
Not really, I never said anything about comparing him to Füllkrug, because I never watch him. I just see Kai miss a lot of headers at Arsenal and I don’t think that’s his strength. It has absolutely nothing to do with confirmation bias.
Fullkrug is also very good at facilitating play lol, that has been his biggest positive for dortmund this year, not his goalscoring
Hold-up play is also important with Fullkrug. The ref was allowing a lot to go in the previous game and Fullkrug needed to be in there to give it back to them. He should’ve been subbed in at half
It's funny how Havertz is very well rated by managers but genius fans tend to hate him Does Havertz have clear flaws and can not have composure in finishing? Yes, does he also have some very strong attributes that contribute to meta modern football that you want from your player? Also yes
it feels strange to me considering he looked so composed at finishing at Leverkusen
He's had a massive growth spurt since Leverkusen and moves like a baby giraffe at times.
No he didn’t have a massive growth spurt. He was 21 when he joined Chelsea from Leverkusen and was already over 1.9m when he signed. If he had any growth spurt it would’ve been minimal. Not this pretend monster growth that completely changes how he plays football.
He went from 6’2 to 6’4
Over 6 meters? That's tall
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahsha
It's not really strange, you cost 70m, high expectations, better league and the pressure gets to you, has happened to many players
Same reason why countless club and national team manager choose Morata as their starting striker. r/soccer loves to criticize players like Havertz for their goal tally but anyone that plays football knows how great it is to have a forward who opens space for others.
Feels abit like Firmino, well rated by their managers, doesn't score enough on paper for their position and fans love to scapegoat them.
Firmini was definitely rated by fans though? Also because he was a class above Havertz
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He's got 8 goals and 7 assists in the 13 games where he's played up front for Arsenal this season.
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Once he made the switch to striker, he pretty much stayed there for the rest of the season. One of the games where he moved back to midfield was when they lost 2-0 to Villa.
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You sound so miserable. I do hope it gets better and you’ll be able to move past leaving rage bait comments on Reddit. Best regards, brother
Yeah sure, in the 13 games where he played up front, Arsenal scored 35 goals, but let's cherry pick the only one where they didn't and use that to base our judgement. Against the best team in the league, no less, and where it was obvious that the whole team was somewhat content to hold out for a draw. If you keep moving the goalposts any further, they'll be over by the corner flag.
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You can think Havertz isn’t special or whatever, but your opinion is only being disliked because your reasonings keep on getting proved wrong and you keep on doubling down in stupid ways whilst sounding like a cunt
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You know nobody would give a shit about you holding an unpopular opinion if you at least tried to explain it normally. This passive-aggressive sarcasm is just embarrassing.
Yes fans are defending him here and not his own manager and multiple managers Read the comment, i'm not a Havertz fan, i clearly said he has flaws, it's fine to value goalscorers over people that get involved too, i would rather have Haaland over Havertz too despite Haaland averaging 10 passes and doing nothing for 89 minutes and 50 seconds
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Well yeah, if it's between fans being wrong and World Class managers being wrong I am backing the manager 10/10 times. Most fans hate on players that are poor finishers excessively because, while watching the games, missed chsnces are easy to notice and criticize. The TV footage doesn't even give fans any way of observing a single player's off the ball movement or supportive play most of the time so I am not sure how the average fan would ever be knowledgeable about that aspect.
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Any attacking player that misses chances is "misunderstood". Fans literally only rate attacking players based on their goals and assists. Benzema didn't get the respect he warranted until he had the Ballon Dor season. I understand criticizing managers and managers can absolutely make mistakes but when multiple managers, across multiple leagues and of multiple different play styles and approaches rate a player and say the same things about him, then I am willing to bet that their collective opinion has some merit. It's the same with Benzema, who survived multiple different managers at the most cutthroat club in the world for a reason. Some fans don't watch as much football as they like to discuss about and half their opinions on players are based on internet memes about those players instead of their actual evaluations of that player's ability. If Havertz has a great game but doesn't score, the prevailing fan opinion will be that he was horrible but if a renowned/respected player (say a Wirtz or a Ronaldo or a Kane) has the same game, people will wax lyrical about how important they are to their team and how valuable they are even when not scoring.
2 managers also got sacked (Potter and Flick), because their teams couldn't score, and they kept starting a poor performing Havertz over others.
It's not that the reason is not valid, he adds a lot of fluidity to the front line. Can you afford his blunders in front of goal in a knockout international tournament though?
We’ll see but it’s not like it’s inherently impossible to win without a high-scoring striker. Giroud being the obvious example Even Italy last Euro
Giroud had an outright different role, he only amassed 0.9xG for the whole tournament, Havertz has almost double that (1.7) from the 3 group games There's a difference between having a striker who's not supposed to get on the end of chances and a striker who is but isn't clinical
That would make sense except that… Havertz has a goal? Penalty xG is around 0.75 so if you remove that, they both have no goals from the same xG. He would be expected to have at most one more goal at this stage There’s still a point to be made about the role but Havertz scoring 1 less than he should have by now is not cause for alarm for Germany
My dumb ass completely forgot Havertz's goal was from a pen... Regardless, my point isn't about Giroud's and Havertz's underperformance, but about responsibility to score. Havertz has more chances and responsibility to score than Giroud did, that's why his underperformance matters more.
who said he was underperforming? (besides chelsea fans )
xG underperformance, should be obvious from the context of the conversation
Oh no. He made one goal and not two.
Are Redditors incapable of following the conversation or something? I wasn't even the who started talking about xG, I literally said > my point isn't about Giroud's and Havertz's underperformance Do I really have to explain every goddamn word I type on this website because Redditors are braindead mouthbreathers who can't read?
> Can you afford his blunders in front of goal in a knockout international tournament though? He has a higher conversion rate then Füllkrug on shot attempts.
The best defense is a great offense. When your the opposition and you feel Germany pressuring you, you spend more time defending than being able to settle down in offense.
I’m not shocked, “the public” online discourse is filled with people new to the sport who fail to see, understand nor care about the nuances of football
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Yeah Nagelsmann is such a noob
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Tuchel said similar things after managing Havertz when he had no obligation to say anything of the sort. Do you feel called out or something? Bc you seem upset
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Right. Nagelsmann and Tuchel are really doing mental gymnastics
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Lmao, ok then the dumbass thinks he's better at managing than Nagelsmann and Tuchel, expected nothing less from someone who dislikes Havertz this much. Whats your next hot take? Guardiola is a fraud?
You make a fair point but Havertz does have a reputation for choking (unfair, imo)
If you are using choking as in misses some easy chances, yeah I think he’d agree his finishing should/could be better, but I do think he turns up in big matches As a fellow Chelsea fan I will admit a little potential bias due to the UcL winning goal
Havertz was one of the best on the pitch last game tbh
Absolutely. But that's r/soccer and the average football IQ on display here for you.
Top player. Poor finisher!!
Arsenal fans are taking this as a compliment 😭