Starting Havertz in a deeper role for Chelsea has hampered his ability 

Chelsea’s consolation goal in the 92nd minute against Manchester City on Sunday didn’t provide much in the way of consolation for an increasingly embattled Frank Lampard, but the move which brought it about did at least offer some hope.

While many of Chelsea’s starters were moving at half speed, two of his substitutes — Callum Hudson-Odoi and Kai Havertz — combined to conjure a goal born of the fastest and most fluid football this team has produced since Leeds United were beaten 3-1 at Stamford Bridge at the start of December.

As the ball reached the feet of Mason Mount just inside the City half and John Stones stepped up to track him, Havertz saw an opportunity. He dashed beyond Rodri into the space Stones had vacated, giving Christian Pulisic the opportunity to play a quick, incisive pass ahead of him into the left channel after receiving the ball from Mount.

Rodri was left labouring in Havertz’s wake and the Germany international gave him no chance to recover, whipping an inviting low cross into the penalty area with one touch. It was too strong for Werner but perfectly in stride for Hudson-Odoi, who supplied a clinical finish under pressure from Oleksandr Zinchenko.

It was an example of why Hudson-Odoi should probably have more than 333 Premier League minutes to his name this season, and a reminder of the qualities that Havertz, the golden boy of German football, was expected to bring to Chelsea from Bayer Leverkusen — qualities that have manifested themselves all too rarely on the pitch in the first four months of his career at Stamford Bridge.

Lampard has consistently defended Havertz in public, putting his slow start down to a combination of his youth, the challenge of adjusting to the Premier League and dealing with the lingering effects of contracting COVID-19 in November; in addition to being confined to his bed for more than a week with significant symptoms, the 21-year-old missed around a month of training time.

But there are other reasons why Havertz is yet to show the best version of himself in this Chelsea team — reasons that spring from Lampard’s system, and the role he is being asked to play within it.

The most memorable moment of Havertz’s debut for Chelsea against Brighton in September occurred in the 74th minute. With his team 3-1 up and on the attack, the Germany international found himself dispossessed by Solly March with Reece James committed to an overlapping run outside him, leaving an ocean of space for the winger to launch a counter-attack:

March drove upfield but Havertz, keen to atone for his mistake, tracked him every step of the way. After a 70-yard recovery sprint he pounced on a loose touch to win the ball back for Chelsea in his own penalty area, passing it to the safety of James before collapsing in an exhausted heap on the floor:

Lampard applauded from the dugout and when the Germany international was substituted a few minutes later, his effort was greeted warmly by the Chelsea bench.

It was a sequence that highlighted Chelsea’s cavalier imbalance — how does a team with a two-goal lead so late in a game lose possession with six players ahead of the ball? — and hinted at the different things Havertz might be required to do for his new team. On that day he was deployed on the right of a 4-2-3-1, but Lampard’s shift to a 4-3-3 system in October has seen him re-cast as a roving No 8 in a midfield trio:

During his career at Leverkusen, Havertz was largely picked as a No 10 in a 4-2-3-1, a right-sided attacker in a 3-4-2-1 or, during the Bundesliga restart last season, as a false nine:

Starting in a deeper role for Chelsea has hampered his ability to have the same impact in the final third of the pitch while giving him more defensive responsibility than ever before. Both trends are clear in the advanced numbers; just look at his attacking metrics this season compared with his final two seasons in Germany…

Equally striking are his defensive metrics. Havertz’s averages for tackles, interceptions, blocks, fouls committed and pressures (number of times pressing an opponent) per 90 minutes are all career highs:

Where those pressures are taking place is also significant. Havertz is expending far more of his energy before the final third of the pitch for Chelsea than he ever did for Leverkusen:

The change in Havertz’s statistical profile can be seen most clearly in these graphics using data from smarterscout, a site which gives detailed analytics on players all over the world, producing a score between 0-99, a bit like the player ratings in the FIFA video games but powered by real data and advanced analytics. Here is what his contribution looked like last season at Leverkusen…

…and here it is at Chelsea this season. You can clearly see that all of his attacking metrics have taken a hit, while his defensive workload now makes up a much bigger element of his overall impact:

This isn’t automatically a bad thing. It’s normal for a central midfielder to do more defensive work than a pure creator or scorer, and Havertz may well be capable of maturing into a world-class No 8. But if his Chelsea future does lie in this deeper position, it’s probably unfair to expect him to replicate the goal and assist tallies that he produced at Leverkusen.

Another, more immediately concerning issue is that Havertz has often underwhelmed in possession for Chelsea. March’s tackle and surge upfield on the Premier League’s opening weekend was the first of several memorable examples of the Germany international being dispossessed after trying and failing to dribble his way out of pressure or attempting to force the issue in the opposition half.

Some of this might be the realisation that he can’t take the same risks as a No 8 that he could as a No 10, as well as a natural part of his adaptation to the speed and intensity of Premier League opponents. Havertz hinted as much himself in October, describing Premier League games as “very exhausting” and adding that he hadn’t come across “any average or bad players” in England.

But there have also been signs of a systemic issue. Havertz thrived in a succession of Leverkusen teams with a consistent tactical structure. His role within the team concept was always clearly defined and the spaces he would regularly run into, along with the passes available to him, became more familiar in training and in matches. Fluid football was achieved as much by repetition as it was by decisions in the moment on the pitch.

Things are more free-form at Chelsea. Lampard wants to empower his attacking talents to think for themselves and, at any rate, this season has yielded relatively little training time to build system-based combinations between all of the new faces in this squad. At its best, Chelsea’s less structured approach has yielded some spectacular attacking moves, but in the bad moments the team shape has suffered with consequences at both ends of the pitch – and Havertz seems to have found this environment more difficult than most.

Here, in the first half against Everton last month, Havertz receives the ball in his own half and attempts to move upfield. The problem is that he has no real options; James, still in his own penalty area, is in no position to offer a safe pass, three opposition players are blocking any angle to Mateo Kovacic, N’Golo Kante and Mount, and none of Chelsea’s front three are showing for the ball either:

Havertz elects to carry the ball out towards the right touchline, but he doesn’t have the speed to beat Ben Godfrey. He’s forced to turn back and as he does, Gylfi Sigurdsson doubles up on him and wins the ball:

It’s fair to say dribbling was a bad decision, but short of winning a free kick or lumping the ball aimlessly upfield, it’s difficult to see what else he could do in this situation.

In another example from the first half of Chelsea’s win over Leeds, Havertz receives a lay-off from Olivier Giroud just over the halfway line. The logical forward pass here should be out to the right flank, but no one is there; Hakim Ziyech has gone off injured and Timo Werner, nominally his replacement on the right of Chelsea’s attack, has drifted into the No 9 position:

Havertz doesn’t fancy his chances of dribbling into the ocean of space himself, with Kalvin Phillips and Jack Harrison both tracking him closely. Instead he tries to play it safe, shifting the ball away from Phillips to his right in preparation for a pass back into defence — but he shows too much of it to Harrison, who comes away with the ball and immediately runs straight at Chelsea’s back four:

Clearly this sequence doesn’t reflect well on Havertz’s ability to protect the ball, but it also highlights how Chelsea’s occasionally incoherent structure complicates his decision-making. Here he is receiving the ball in a very similar position and moving it on quickly to Ziyech, who is in position by the touchline:

As the former Ajax man advances with the ball Havertz surges forward, providing another Chelsea body in the Leeds penalty area as James rushes forward to provide an overlap:

The resulting James cross is converted by Giroud at the near post but if he hadn’t been there, the likeliest outcome would have been a Havertz tap-in. These are the late runs from midfield that he made so often at Leverkusen, and they are likely to form the bulk of his goal threat if Lampard continues to use him as a No 8.

Havertz is progressing the ball significantly less at Chelsea than he was at Leverkusen, as you can see in the table below. Progressive distance is the distance in yards that a player’s passes have travelled towards the opposition goal per 90 minutes:

Too often he looks content to play sideways or backwards passes, perhaps wary of being dispossessed if he tries something more ambitious. But at times it’s also clear that Havertz’s decisions are being conditioned by Chelsea’s broader structural difficulties finding progressive passes through midfield, particularly when faced with more defensive-minded opponents.

Here is Havertz against Wolves, drifting out towards the right touchline as he often does to find space and receive a pass from James:

Wolves give him time to turn but when he does, the picture confronting him is unappealing: not only are Werner and Giroud fairly static with markers in close proximity, but none of Chelsea’s midfielders are close enough to offer him a progressive passing option:

The inevitable result is that Havertz is forced to turn back as Fernando Marcal advances on him, playing the ball back to James and requiring Chelsea to recycle possession:

Another significant adjustment for Havertz has been his less prominent role in Chelsea’s broader attacking ecosystem. During his final season at Leverkusen, he was the target of more passes per 90 minutes than any other regular starter in the squad. This season he ranks below all of Lampard’s regular back four by the same metric, as well as Ziyech and Kovacic when they are on the pitch:

By signing Havertz, Ziyech and Werner, Chelsea knew they were acquiring three players who had been the undisputed focal points of their previous team’s attacking systems. There is only one football, so it was inevitable that all of the new attacking additions would need to find their places in a more egalitarian structure — particularly with Pulisic, Hudson-Odoi, Tammy Abraham and Giroud also at Lampard’s disposal.

Nevertheless, there have been long stretches of his Chelsea appearances this season in which Havertz has looked far too peripheral for a player of his talent.

Lampard talks to Havertz regularly. He knows the importance of ensuring that Chelsea’s marquee signing of a spectacular transfer window thrives on the pitch, and is making attempts to help him be more impactful.

Confidence has never been an issue for Havertz, and there are no suggestions that he has been driven to self-doubt by his slow start. Despite the challenges of moving country during a historic global pandemic, he has settled in a house in south west London and is enjoying his new life. He certainly isn’t regretting his decision to leave Leverkusen for Chelsea, as some reports in Germany have claimed.

The burst of acceleration that created Chelsea’s only goal against City provided encouraging evidence that his bout of illness is now behind him, and he is simply too talented not to get a lot better. But maximising Havertz’s rare blend of gifts to the benefit of the team is just as much up to Lampard and his coaching staff as it is the responsibility of the player himself — and putting him in the right position to succeed is likely to prove vital in determining how long they are given to oversee Roman Abramovich’s latest grand project.

(Top photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)