Kai Havertz has found his role at Arsenal - he's their sexy Marouane Fellaini

There were two staunch camps at odds when Kai Havertz joined Arsenal from Chelsea last summer.

The first consisted of the optimists, primarily those heavy on viewing the game through data, analytics, numbers and maybe above all else, crumbs of hope. The second were the pessimists, who had Havertz-fever beaten out of him after largely underwhelming in England since his 2020 arrival on these shores from Bayer Leverkusen. Neither side wanted to listen to the other.

Predictably then, Havertz's time at Arsenal has now fallen somewhere in the middle. After 33 Premier League games for the Gunners, he's registered a completely respectable — if not admirable — 11 goals and five assists, a feat all the more impressive when you consider he blanked in his first six matches. But he's becoming a player who needs those stats to contribute anything meaningful to any given 90 minutes of action.

Havertz is the paradoxical complete-but-nothing footballer. At 6ft4 and with technique that at times mirrors a sporting unicorn, he should be among the best players in the world. And yet he can only string, knit and piece together each thread of ability from time to time.

In full flight, Havertz is a multi-dimensional, two-way threat who can pass, dribble, header and score, bringing a unique blend of grace and grit. At his worst, Arsenal essentially play with 10 men.

The scale between the ceiling and floor has rarely been so wide for a consistent figure for a team competing for a Premier League title. The ceiling is the roof and the floor is the crust of the Earth, in this case. It's what makes Havertz so enamouring and fascinating, perhaps a reason why Mikel Arteta wanted him, perhaps a little representative of his young and ambitious team as a