Arsenal have a decision to make on Kai Havertz, and it is a bigger one than most supporters admit. He is reportedly paid somewhere between £230,000 and £280,000 a week, his contract runs until 2028, and whatever the club does next will shape the attack for years.
He is 27, one of Mikel Arteta’s most trusted lieutenants and among the first names on the team sheet whenever he is fit. That is exactly what makes this awkward. If Arsenal want to keep climbing, the front three needs freshening up, and a long, expensive new deal for Havertz would lock money and minutes into the way things are now.
He is not the only one whose deal ends in 2028. Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard, Jurrien Timber, Ben White, David Raya and Mikel Merino are all in the same bracket. Rice, Odegaard, Raya and Timber look like straightforward renewals. Havertz, along with White, is the one that splits the fanbase.
What has Havertz actually given Arsenal?
Credit first, because he has earned it. Havertz is a big-game player. He has scored or set up goals against Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and Sporting when Arsenal needed him, he loves a goal against Chelsea, and he has done it against Tottenham, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Liverpool too. Add the late goals and assists against Luton, Brentford and Manchester United, and there is a long list of moments that mattered.
The season-by-season numbers tell a less flattering story, though, mostly because of injuries.
| Season | Appearances | Goals | Assists |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 51 | 14 | 8 |
| 2024-25 | 36 | 15 | 5 |
| 2025-26 | 24 (12 in the Premier League) | 7 | 5 |
| 2026-27 so far | 14 | 4 | 1 |
Across his career, he managed 46 goals and 31 assists in 150 games for Bayer Leverkusen, 32 goals and 16 assists in 139 for Chelsea, and 40 goals and 19 assists in 125 for Arsenal. He has scored or assisted in 48% of his Premier League starts for the Gunners, and Arsenal win 72.7% of games with him against 52.4% without. That last figure needs care, as the players who start most will always look good in a winning side, but it is not nothing.
Why the managers love him
Arteta has praised his football intelligence and has said he believes Havertz could reach 25 to 30 goals. Julian Nagelsmann has made the point that playing in that role goes beyond goals, and Thomas Tuchel has compared him to Dennis Bergkamp, Robin van Persie and Dimitar Berbatov.
We would not go that far, but it is hard to argue with the off-the-ball work. He pulls wide to the right, works the channels, presses well and gives the team an outlet, and his movement without the ball is among the best around. He is rated higher inside the game than he is in pubs and online, and that matters when you are deciding what he is worth.
Where the wages stop making sense
The trouble is the one thing a striker is judged on. Havertz scores some lovely goals, but not consistently. When he is good he is very good, and when he has a stinker it is a real one. Our honest ceiling for him is around 20 goals in all competitions and 13 or 14 in the league, not the 25 to 30 his manager talks about. He has already been flagged offside more this season than any Arsenal player managed in the whole of last season, which says plenty about how hard he is working to get in behind and how often it is not quite coming off.
Now put that next to the wage bill. Arsenal have handed big new deals to Bukayo Saka and William Saliba, and Rice, Raya and Timber are surely next in line. Paying the thick end of £250,000 a week, possibly with a rise, to a player who might be a rotation option in the ideal XI is not the best use of those resources.
Name Arsenal’s strongest side and the two areas that can still be improved are up front and on the left wing. That is why we argued recently that a left winger should come before a striker in January, and it is why Gary Neville’s point that Arsenal need a world-class striker ahead of their two forwards landed so hard. Havertz and Viktor Gyökeres are both useful squad players. If the title and the Champions League depend on them scoring, though, the same conversations will keep coming back every season.
Is there a market for him?
Probably, because clubs rate him more than fans do. A side like Paris Saint-Germain or Bayern Munich would make tactical sense. But Arsenal paid Chelsea around £65 million for him, and with his contract running down and his age, getting anything close to that back would take some serious work from Andrea Berta.
And there is no point letting him go without a replacement lined up. The striker market looks thin, and whenever Arsenal are linked with a household name, the conversation usually ends with the club refusing to pay the price. Selling Havertz only works if the next forward is already identified.
So what are the options? Renew Havertz, bring in a new forward and move Gyökeres on. Sell Havertz, bring in a striker and keep Gyökeres and Merino as cover. Or sell both and lean on Merino while the new man settles. If it is left to Arteta, Havertz gets his new deal, and Berta and the Kroenkes tend to back their manager. We doubt everyone above Arteta is fully convinced, though.
Should Arsenal give Kai Havertz a new contract?
Yes, but only on terms that reflect the player he is. A three or four-year deal for a 27-year-old on more than £200,000 a week, after the club has already pushed its wage bill this far, does not add up. On the same money or less, as a trusted, versatile forward who scores in big games, he is worth keeping.
What Arsenal cannot do is treat a new Havertz deal as the answer to the striker question. Keep him if the price is right, but buy the goalscorer anyway. Arteta might have to be cruel to be kind.
