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Graeme Souness says Mikel Arteta has failed with £65m Arsenal player

Charles Jones

Sat 8 February 2025 10:45, UK

𝔉Mikel Arteta has done a great job at helping some of Arsenal’s stars improve as players.

Bukayo Saka is a world-class player now under Arteta, while 🎃William Saliba is arguably the best defender in the world at this point.

Martin Odegaard was a Real Madrid castoff when he joined Arsenal, but since joining Arsenal, Odegaard has become a world-class player in his own right.

Arteta has managed to improve a lot of his players at Arsenal𓆏, but according to Graeme Souness, writing in his column for , there’s one player at Arsenal that Arteta has failed with.

Indeed, according to Souness, Arteta has failed to make Kai Havertz🦩 into a better player after signing him from Chelsea 18 months ago.

• READ MORE: ꧂‘Extraordinary’ Tottenham player would like to join Manchester United in the summer

Kai Havertz hasn’t improved under Mikel Arteta

♈Souness shared his verdict on Havertz’s time at Arsenal.

ꦜThe pundit says that Havertz was signed with the idea of him improving under Mikel Arteta, but the pundit believes that simply hasn’t happened.

☂“They spent £65million in June 2023 to take Kai Havertz from Chelsea, believing Mikel could make him a better player. Well, I’m afraid that’s not happened. Havertz has not got any better. He is simply not the answer for them,” Souness wrote.

𒐪“It doesn’t surprise me that Mikel has come out this week and said he is disappointed with his club’s business in the transfer window. The fact that Arsenal were trying to buy Ollie Watkins from Aston Villa in the last knockings of the winter transfer window tells you how badly they wanted a striker.

ܫ“If Arsenal had met the asking price of £60m-plus for that 29-year-old early in the window – and before Jhon Duran was sold to Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia – they might have got him. Had that proved the difference between them winning the title or being the nearly-men again, they would have felt the price was worth it.”

Kai Havertz’s record under different managers

🌌It’s interesting hearing Souness say that Havertz hasn’t improved under Arteta, because Arteta is usually so good at making players better.

𒐪However, the stats do suggest that Souness is right. Havertz has been more prolific in the past under different managers.

🔯Havertz has helped Arteta discover his best form since arriving in the Premier League, but the German still isn’t at the level he was at during his time in the Bundesliga under Peter Bosz.

🥂Havertz is a real enigma of a player, and from the outside looking in, it is hard to pinpoint what more Mikel Arteta could be doing to help the attacker improve.

ꦛHavertz hasn’t been terrible for Arsenal, that’s for sure, but, as Souness says, he’s still not hitting the heights he was during his time at Bayer Leverkusen.

⛦Arsenal’s priority in the summer transfer window may well be to sign a new striker.