Is Havertz living up to his £72m price tag?

Stefan Bienkowski

• 19 Oct 2021 17:12 BST
• 3 min read

Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has admitted that star signing Kai Havertz has had a poor start to the season and will have to work hard to make his way back into the team.

The Germany international has been a consistent part of Tuchel’s team this season but to date has only managed one goal and one assist in all competitions.

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And although the Chelsea manager believes he’ll turn his form around soon, he also suspects Havertz will have to fight his way back into the starting XI.

’He needs to fight his way back into the team’

“Yeah, that's a fact, and he does everything to reach this level again and we do everything to help him,” said Tuchel at a press conference on Tuesday. “He's an important player for our squad.

“He had many games to start with, he started strong, he was very strong in pre-season. The story has not changed, but he lacks the statistics of decisive things, of goals and assists.

“He needs to fight his way back into the team, and he gets minutes and this can happen any time. We trust in him, and we believe in him, and the rest has to come from him, and he's willing to do so.

“He's in a good shape, he's in a good mental state, he knows what he's fighting for and that's the situation right now.

Has Havertz struggled at Chelsea?

Although Havertz has undoubtedly shown his brilliance in flashes of form for Chelsea, it’s probably fair to say that he hasn’t quite become the player they thought they were signing back in 2019.

In his first season at the club, Havertz bagged a respectable nine goals and nine assists but that was over the course of 45 games. And so far this season he’s only managed to pick up a solitary goal and assist in 10 games.

In his last season at Leverkusen, Havertz was averaging 0.61 goals and assists per 90 but that figure then dropped to 0.52 in his first season at Chelsea and now stands at just 0.3 for the club this season.