Despite picking up seven points from their first three Premier League games, Arteta's Arsenal look a shadow of the title-challenging side from last season
backpass only looked so egregious because Thomas Partey and Ben White had vacated their posts and minds, while Aaron Ramsdale read the situation like it was in Urdu.
For most of the first half, White and Partey looked somewhere between deeply uncomfortably and genuinely concussed. Tasked with clearing a dangerous ball in his own penalty area, White instead headed it two yards in the path of Raul Jimenez, who was so surprised he could only flash his bicycle kick wide. Not long after, he drilled a long pass to Issa Diop, who had no Arsenal player within 10 yards of him in any direction.
At times against Fulham, Havertz functioned as part of a front four, alongside Gabriel Martinelli, Saka and Leandro Trossard. At others, he joined Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard in a central trio. He looked comfortable in neither, disrupting both before he was hauled off on 52 minutes for Fabio Vieira, who won the penalty for Arsenal’s first and set-up their second.
Eleven minutes in, Havertz, no more than three yards out, managed to flick a close-range Saka pass straight back from whence it came. Three minutes later, he burst in between Issa Diop and Calvin Bassey, chasing a Ben White long-ball, through on goal with only Bernd Leno to beat. This was pure Havertz – fleetingly dangerous, flirting with the possibility of genius then watching the ball roll into the goalie’s gloves.
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