Simon Jordan accepts Arsenal ‘need to improve’ if they are to take the Premier League title away from Manchester City but Chelsea forward Kai Havertz is a ‘strange’ £65 million signing.
Now, if the Gunners were signing the Germany international three years ago – Kai Havertz seizing the opportunity to showcase his talents to a far wider audience as the Bundesliga kept us all entertained during the dark days of lockdown – then the streets of North London would again be partying like it’s 2013; Havertz perhaps Arsenal’s most exciting arrival since compatriot Mesut Ozil.
It speaks volumes about how things have gone for him down the road at Chelsea, then, that one of the game’s most mercurial talents will now move to the Emirates amid a chorus of ‘why’s’ and ‘what for’s’.
According to the Evening Standard, Havertz underwent a medical with Arsenal over the weekend. The 24-year-old will set the Gunners back £65 million. A fee that has raised plenty of eyebrows given that Havertz scored only two more league goals in three years at Chelsea than he did in the 2018/19 season alone at Bayer Leverkusen.
Arsenal close in on £65m Kai Havertz deal with Chelsea
“I think it’s a strange signing from Arsenal,” Jordan, the former Crystal Palace owner, tells talkSPORT (26 June, 11am).
“But I’m assuming they will know a damn sight more about their reasons for signing him than I do. It will be interesting to see what he does, because I think Arsenal need to improve.
“We saw it last season. In one game, they didn’t have enough offensive capabilities. And, in the next one, they didn’t have enough defensive ones. They had Eddie Nketiah to turn to to try and score goals.”
These are big, big numbers you are going to have to spend to build a squad that is capable of staying in the top four.”
Havertz, it must be said, was dealt a rather tough hand at Chelsea.
At his best in a roving playmaker role, the elegant German struggled when asked to lead the line as a centre-forward, that iconic winning goal in the 2021 Champions League final victory over Manchester City certainly more the exception rather than the rule as far as his Chelsea career is concerned.
“(That goal) is a legendary outcome,” Jordan argues. “But I think value to the side is (quantified by) more than one individual game,”
“I think Chelsea’s ownership model now will take scant consolation in the fact that he scored a goal two years ago in a Champions League final. So yes, he can occupy the entitlement to suggest that his goal was a legendary goal.
“But what we’re talking about now is a side that can perform at the highest level.”
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