Arsenal are Kai Havertz’s team: German sets an impressive tone in Champions League win over PSG

LONDON — It has been more than a little curious to see Mikel Arteta so candidly admit on more than one occasion in recent days that his Arsenal side are missing the “enormous” influence of Martin Odegaard as their club captain deals with an ankle injury. Not that there is any shocking revelation to Arsenal being a changed side without one of the game’s great creators, game managers and press conductors. It’s just managers tend not to actually say it. All the more so when they are as taciturn as Arteta usually is.

Arsenal’s search for a guiding light has not taken long, however. This measured, robust drubbing of a supposed Champions League contender crystallized a sense that has been building for a while around north London. For the time being at least, Arsenal are a team in Kai Havertz’s image.

Imposing, organized and with an eye for gaps the defense seem utterly unaware of: this team does not need the 60 percent possession and 25 shots they might crave when Odegaard is setting the terms of engagement. There won’t be time to set your defensive lines up, Arsenal will simply get the ball back and go at you.

From minute three David Raya proved himself to be perfectly willing to go as long as he could, clipping the ball in behind the Paris Saint-Germain backline to set Gabriel Martinelli into a foot race with the skittish Gianluigi Donnarumma. Whenever the moment called for it, this was a team who were perfectly prepared to get their center forward to drop into the space behind, win the header and get Arsenal moving.

Before too long he had done that often enough that no one in a PSG shirt seemed to spot him ghosting through the defensive line as they all converged on the danger elsewhere. Leandro Trossard was altogether more alive to Havertz’s movements, dropping the ball in just the right spot for a flicked header from the striker. Not for the last time tonight, Donnarumma did not cover himself in glory.

Then again, credit should go to Havertz. He might have arrived in north London convinced he shouldn’t be a center forward anymore but he is extremely good at it. Like all the best strikers, he has that sense of where the defense’s attention is and is not. And so when three PSG shirts were lasering in on Bukayo Saka on the left flank, he simply ran around them, flying to the byline to deliver a dangerous low cross. For a gangly, 6-foot-4 center forward with quite a reputation to him, Havertz did seem remarkably hard for the Parisiens to spot.

Even accounting for their center forward’s ghostly qualities, this is Arsenal at their most smash mouth. If that seems a curious description for Havertz and the team who is taking on his image, you simply have not been watching him closely enough. Yes the zero completed passes caught the eye after the draw with Manchester City but no one better typified the industry of a team with their backs to the Etihad wall.

It almost seems rote to go back to the difficulties Havertz had in those early months after leaving Chelsea. More of his time in north London has now been defined by his excellence than his early travails. His record at the Emirates in 2024 is impressive indeed: nine goals and three assists at a rate of one every 99 minutes. Barely a game goes by without that unbearable interpolation of his transfer fee into Shakira’s “Waka Waka.”

At his home from home Havertz settled into the role of Arsenal’s lead presser, the Gunners excelling from the off at funneling PSG out to the flanks. From there they would force the pass up the line, particularly down their right hand side, where Jurrien Timber seemed to delight in inflicting his hereto unknown bully ball qualities on Bradley Barcola.

From front to back, Mikel Arteta’s men were simply stronger than Luis Enrique’s. Once Bukayo Saka’s free kick evaded everyone – the first direct free kick they have scored since Odegaard bended one into the Burnley’s top bins in September 2021 – they only needed to deploy those qualities fleetingly. William Saliba and Gabriel would thrust out a leg and a counter was blocked, Rice would drive through midfield, Havertz would draw a foul with his back to goal. This has the look of a winning formula.

Not that that means Arsenal need to rip up the formula that got them to domestic and European contention, as they will surely find themselves in the months ahead. Indeed there is nothing that precludes them from playing this way when Odegaard is back to snap into the press. Instead Arsenal have found another way to win, and do so in style against high grade opponents (at least on paper). That the approach might be defined by a man on whom Arteta invested such personal capital will only make sweeter this serene progress through what were meant to be trying times.