Kai Havertz has now been caught offside 15 times in the Premier League this season, with Arsenal only ten league games in, which is already more than any Arsenal player was flagged in the whole of last season.
The number came out of Saturday’s 1-0 win over Hull City, where one of those flags cost Arsenal a penalty. The previous club high for a full league campaign was Bukayo Saka’s 14 in 2025-26, and Kai Havertz has passed it before the middle of November.
It is a strange stat for a player whose whole game was supposed to be about clever movement, and it adds fuel to a debate that has followed Arteta’s front line all season.
The offside that cost Arsenal a penalty
The 15th one hurt. In the first half against Hull, Havertz had his shirt pulled in the box by Nobel Mendy and went down expecting a penalty. VAR sent referee Farai Hallam to the monitor, and Hallam told the crowd the German had been fouled, but that no penalty would be given because he was already offside.
There is an argument about whether an offside position should cancel out a clear foul like that, and Arteta himself said afterwards that “we don’t have clarity on it”. But the more worrying part, for us, is that Havertz was ahead of play in the first place.
Opta’s numbers put the flag in context:
15 – Kai Havertz has been caught offside 15 times in the Premier League this season, already more than any Arsenal player was flagged in the competition last term (Bukayo Saka, 14).
– OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) November 7, 2026
Strayed. pic.twitter.com/QkneG5oDNh
Why does Havertz keep getting caught offside?
Havertz should not be blamed for trying to run in behind. Against a side like Hull, who sat deep and squeezed the space between their lines, a striker has to try to stretch them somehow.
The problem is that it is not really his game. At his best, Havertz drops in, links play, arrives late in the box and wins headers. When he is asked to live on the shoulder of the last defender every week, the timing goes, and the flags follow.
Arteta has never hidden that he sees the role as flexible. He has said Havertz’s position could change from game to game, and on Saturday he spent most of the afternoon as the furthest man forward against a back five that was happy to hold its line.
What Arteta said about the offsides
The Arsenal boss was asked about it directly in his post-match press conference, and he did not defend the number. “Something to improve. I said it, there are many areas that we need to improve,” he said. “But certainly it’s far too many.”
Asked whether it was Havertz running too early or the passers releasing the ball too late, he said: “It’s a combination. It’s all about timing. So there is a signal on the ball, and you need to time it around that.” He did add that “the sample is quite short to analyse it”, and when he was asked whether fixing it would mean more goals for Havertz, he smiled it away: “You and me can go in the office, work on that and then it’s a simple answer.”
A poor afternoon all round
The offside was not the only issue against Hull. He had a disappointing first half, and when he was played through he turned back rather than shooting. He was taken off after 63 minutes, with Viktor Gyokeres coming on in his place.
That change did not fix much either. Gyokeres made his usual selfless runs but had little impact, and the goal only arrived when Martin Odegaard followed up Noni Madueke’s saved shot, as we covered in our Arsenal 1-0 Hull City match report.
Does Arsenal need a new striker?
It is a fair question, and the same one was asked about this pair last season. Neither has made the No.9 shirt his own, and the stat on Saturday will not help Havertz’s case.
To be fair to both, they have had their moments. Havertz scored the only goal at Anfield last week, and Gyokeres scored and set one up in the 2-1 win in Prague on Wednesday. They are not useless. They are just not giving Arsenal the steady return a title side would want from the middle of the front line.
Arteta even pointed to it himself after Hull: “Sometimes my feeling is that we are trying to score a perfect goal against these low blocks. We need to be much more chaotic than that.”
Verdict: Havertz needs a different job, not a different shirt
Arsenal do not need to panic. They have won nine of their ten league games, kept seven clean sheets and sit top of the table, and they showed last season that they can win a league without a prolific No.9.
But 15 offsides ten games into a season tells you a player is being asked to do something that does not suit him. Havertz is at his most useful when he comes short and arrives late, not when he is racing the last defender. Whether Arteta changes the role or goes looking for a different kind of striker when the window opens, this number should not be ignored.
