Liverpool paid between £64-85m (depending on add-ons) for Nunez and he certainly doesn’t have a better goal record than Kai.
£70m was what United paid for Hojlund and we’d all agree he’s been a flop.
Spurs paid £55-65m for Solanke and he’s got comparable numbers to Havertz.
It’s just the market and whilst I won’t disagree with anyone who says we probably overpaid a bit for him and maybe we could have used the money differently I think we’ve certainly extracted much more from him than comparable transfers from rival teams (except maybe Solanke).
Those players you’ve mentioned were coming off of either promising seasons or good ones at the least.
Havertz was being signed off the back of three mediocre seasons at Chelsea and was made one of the top three earners at the club if not the top earner at the time of signing.
After this season it’d normally be time to be considering a contract extension as he’ll have 2 years remaining
He’s already on 275K a week so with the way football works what they’d be looking for £300K plus a week? And he’s still reasonably young so it’d be a 4-5 year deal they’d be after
It just doesn’t make sense, honestly I think he should be sold especially in that case
Show the same ruthlessness they showed with Ramsdale etc.
It was strange that we didn’t negotiate the price. It was obvious that he wasn’t a #8 after a few matches. Unfortunately, I think the plan to make the left-centre midfielder a low touch box crasher has backfired and we’re still feeling the effects now.
Signing has been a 5/10 but for the £65m and 275k we needed him to be a 8/10.
Like I said, I’m not going to argue with anyone who says we overpaid for him because I’d accept that to be the case for most players.
Ultimately it is doesn’t matter much though because that’s just clearly the going rate for players who score around the kind of goal figures that Havertz does. I think we probably could have squeeze Chelsea down a bit more and I personally wouldn’t have pursued Havertz on them kind of wages but players with his kind of output seem to cost £60-70m these days.
I think we overpaid for Rice too. I think we overpaid for Merino. I think we attempted to overpay for Mudryk, Caicedo and a host of other players.
I think we could be smarter with our money but sometimes being too cute in the market backfires too.
Ultimately I like Havertz and think he’s been a bigger success than his “similar position transfer fee counterparts” but yeah I’m not going to die on the hill that we didn’t overpay for him because it’s an easy argument for anyone to make and you’d be a fool to disagree with it.
It’s unacceptable for one of the biggest clubs in Europe to have no top quality strikers or LW and although Havertz or Jesus are fine as a squad players, having both is a luxury we can’t afford.
If we do get a proper striker, we don’t need to keep both because we’re paying them top quality player wages and they’re giving nowhere near the level of performance to deserve them.
Definitely, it’s far more player performance than tactics.
Arteta doesn’t tell them to pass slow, to make poor balls that are either to the player or just behind them rather than in front to run on to.
Arteta doesn’t tell them not to drive forward into clear open space (would be odd since we did it well the last 2 years). He doesn’t stop the players using their weaker foot which continually slows our play down.
On top of that all the backups are now playing and not stepping up to the plate.
Not one player has had a good season for us (ok Gabriel / Partey) and the tactics aren’t really drastically different from last year.
I’d say Raya, Timber, Gabriel, Partey and Saka are probably the only players that I’m pleased with this season in terms of performance levels and consistency.
If he simply gets a few better players, it won’t be a cure all, I don’t agree that it’s mostly down to player performance since what he has them doing is an issue. I don’t believe in this platform he’s forged particularly with regard to the attack.
Look at the profile of players he’s bringing in, actively reducing the technical quality of the squad.
So focused on duels, slow tempo, defence first, off the ball workrate and what not. Arteta is definitely an issue when it comes to the team too.
I know you have your stance on the tactics being the main issue which we’re not going to agree on, because I can’t see what we’ve shifted massively from last year and yet it’s stopped working. Can argue teams sussed us out a bit better which would be fair but that doesn’t explain the slow and poor passing that has hamstrung us.
But focusing on the bit I quoted, I agree here and I don’t like it. I don’t think it was as intentional as it looks because havertz as a left 8 would’ve been quite a good technical shift, maybe even an upgrade on xhaka in that regard had it worked out.
What has really caused it is moving from Jesus to havertz at CF because he failed to take to the LCM role. Then merino has been brought in to fix the same spot. For me that’s ended up in TWO downgrades of technical ability and two relatively poor signings.
Cala signing shows he’s not trying to remove it completely, the guy is good on the ball and if anything our most attacking left back. However he’s not much of an upgrade on Zinchenko on the ball so no major benefit.
I think we sign someone like Wirtz for the left side (either midfield or wing) and it helps us massively.
