This nicely illustrates something I’ve been wondering about - namely, Havertz seems to be a much better defender and a much shitter attacker than I thought.

No doubt it’s partly what he’s being asked to do because that’s how players get on the pitch and stay on it, but while Havertz himself often looks like the on-ball play is passing him by, the team look more solid and difficult to handle with him on the pitch.

When we got our “left 8 attacker” I think I mostly expected a 10-lite like everybody else, and to judge him by goals and assists. Failing that I figured you could judge him through involvements, much like Xhaka was - passes, touches, progression etc. Now I wonder if it’s more fair to judge him as a disruptor of the other team’s schemes instead because that seems to be his real talent, to chase the ball down, recover the ball and carry the press for 90 minutes. He’s a handful and I kind of think sometimes the best way to judge a player is to see now how good they “look” in your team, but how much of a pain in the ass they are to the opposition. Havertz appears to be a massive pain in the ass.

(To be fair I also didn’t realize that Havertz was massive and very good in the air so you could probably just say I had no idea what he was like as a player).

I hope the guy makes more of a habit of playing dangerous passes and gets a couple of goals and assists under his belt. I think they’d do him a world of good. But you have to wonder if the reason he’s continually starting isn’t just injuries, it’s that he exemplifies a team that can continually disrupt what the opposition are trying to do.

The real test is Forest away, they are a mean mean team at home.

It is, but it really doesn’t make up for how shit he was the rest of this game.

Saka and Odegaard were really bad today, not just for their level but overall.

I’m glad Saka pulled this out in the end as it spares his blushes, but he’s well off the boil in terms of his overall impact on games. He’s such a good player that he turns tiny moments into concrete contributions but I hope it clicks soon because despite getting the assist he was by far the worse of the two wingers today.