Arsenal’s German forward scores the winners that matter, so why is his new contract still such a hard call?

Kai Havertz won Arsenal a game at Anfield this month and then gave everyone a reason to doubt him six days later against Hull City. That, in two matches, is the whole problem with deciding his next contract.

The Kai Havertz question is not whether he is a good player. He clearly is. It is whether Arsenal should tie a 27-year-old forward down for his prime on top-end wages when they still cannot say, from one week to the next, which version of him will turn up.

His current deal runs until 2028, so the club is not up against a deadline yet. But the longer it runs, the less he is worth on the market, and that is what forces the issue.

Why do the managers keep picking him?

Start with the case for him, because it is a strong one. His 16th-minute tap-in settled the 1-0 win at Liverpool on 2 November, and it made him the highest-scoring German in Premier League history, past Ilkay Gundogan. We went through how that goal came about in our Liverpool 0-1 Arsenal report, and it was typical of him: free at the back post, in the right place when it mattered.

That is the pattern of his Arsenal career. Over several long stretches, 16 or 17 games at a time across the Premier League and Champions League, he has produced a goal or an assist roughly every 90 minutes, which is the sort of output usually reserved for the club’s very best forwards. And he does it in the big games. Calling him a passenger is simply wrong.

The people who see him every day agree. Mikel Arteta has said he believes Havertz could reach 25 to 30 goals a season. Top managers keep choosing him for a reason: the movement, the pressing and the way he links play are valued far more inside the game than they are on social media.

So where does the doubt come from?

From the days in between. This season he has 4 goals and 1 assist in 14 appearances, and the bad afternoons have been really bad. The 1-0 win over Hull City on 7 November was one of them. He was flagged offside for the 15th time in ten league games, already more than any Arsenal player managed in the whole of last season, when Bukayo Saka’s 14 was the club high. That flag even cost Arsenal a penalty after he had been fouled.

Arteta did not dodge it. “Something to improve. I said it, there are many areas that we need to improve. But certainly it’s far too many,” he said after the game. Havertz was taken off after 63 minutes, and the winner came from Martin Odegaard following up a saved shot.

The offsides are only part of it. His hold-up play, normally one of his strengths, has not been there this autumn, and there have been one-on-ones where a striker who is going to be paid like a star simply has to score. When the team needs a goal against a side sitting deep, as Hull did, he has not been the man to provide it.

Who else is meant to score?

This is where the contract stops being about Havertz alone. Saka is a goalscorer, but at his best his real value is creating, a big chance a game, and the club has just handed him a new deal on that basis. Nobody on the left has yet made the position his own. If neither wide man is a 20-goal forward, the No.9 has to be, and Havertz has never been that over a full season.

Put a 20-goal left winger in the side and the sums change completely. Then a centre-forward who drops in, presses and scores in the big games is exactly what you want. That is why Arsenal’s chase for a new left winger matters as much to the Havertz decision as anything he does himself before January.

Kai Havertz new contract: what the Odegaard U-turn teaches

There is a good reason not to make a final call yet, and it is wearing the armband. A few months ago plenty of Arsenal supporters would have taken a decent offer for Odegaard after a season wrecked by injuries, in which he managed only 16 league starts. Now he is fit, playing higher up the pitch next to Declan Rice and the summer signing Bruno Guimarães, and he already has three league goals this season, two more than in the whole of last season’s title-winning campaign.

Anyone who wrote him off over the summer looks hasty now. The same could happen with Havertz. If he goes on a run through the winter, scores in the big league and Champions League nights and sorts out his timing, the argument for keeping him gets much stronger. Changing your mind on new evidence is not a weakness.

Why rushing a renewal is the bigger risk

But that cuts both ways. A three to five-year deal for a 27-year-old means paying him through the end of his prime, and Arsenal already have big renewals stacking up after looking after Saka and William Saliba. Every pound committed to the forward line as it is now is a pound not spent on the striker or winger who would take this side to the next level. Clubs like Paris Saint-Germain do not hesitate to spend on elite forwards, and Arsenal cannot expect to beat them on the pitch while thinking smaller off it.

Arsenal also need more variety in attack, whoever plays. Arteta said after Hull that his side are sometimes “trying to score a perfect goal against these low blocks. We need to be much more chaotic than that.” A bit more unpredictability, from the players already there or from a new signing, is the real target.

Verdict: wait, and buy the goals anyway

If we had to decide today, we would say no to a long, expensive new deal. Not because Havertz has failed, but because nobody can project the next five years from what he has shown this autumn, and the deal on the table would be built on the best of him rather than the average.

The smarter move is to let the next few months decide it. Arteta will want him kept, and the people above him tend to back their manager, but they would be right to wait. Arsenal go to Newcastle on Saturday 21 November with a six-point lead, nine wins from ten league games and plenty of time to see which Havertz they are dealing with. Whatever they decide on him, the goalscorer still has to be bought.