Arsenal's Kai Havertz

‘I felt the energy’ – Kai Havertz opens up on move to Arsenal and Chelsea exit

Arsenal's Kai Havertz

Kai Havertz says the “energy” surrounding Arsenal last season thanks to the team’s exciting brand of football made him want to join the club.

The former Chelsea man joined the Gunners for £65m last month and made his first outing in an Arsenal shirt in the 1-1 friendly draw with FC Nürnberg in Germany.

Bukayo Saka opened the scoring for Arsenal on seven minutes before his side were pegged back by a second half equaliser.

Havertz came off the bench during the game and afterwards said it was a “dream” to wear the Arsenal shirt.

“I’m very happy. It’s a very big club and now for me to play here is of course a dream and I’m happy to be in this group,” he said.

“I think I’ve been here four days and already I feel very welcome.

“You’ve seen already what Arsenal have achieved last year. It’s a young group and from outside, when I watched them last year it was always fun to watch them.

“I felt the energy behind the club. It’s a historic club and it’s just great now to be here and hopefully we’re going to have a great time and achieve a lot of things.

“From the outside it always looked like a big family and I felt the energy when we played against them also. It was always so tough to play against them because you felt the togetherness of the players and now to be in there, I think from the first second I felt very welcome from the boys.

“Last year it was very close, from the outside I thought they were going to make it. When you are a part of the group you want to achieve the biggest things and of course that’s one of the goals (winning the Premier League).”

The 24-year-old endured a disappointing campaign with Chelsea last season, scoring just seven Premier League goals as the Blues slumped to a 12th-place finish.

But Havertz says he will always appreciate what the club was able to give him, including winning the Champions League back in 2021.

“Of course it was not the best season for Chelsea last year,” he continued.

“I have to say that I’m always going to be thankful for the club, always going to be thankful for the fans as well. I had a very nice three years, sometimes from the outside maybe it doesn’t look like this but it was 100% the right step to go there three years ago.

“But now my full focus is on Arsenal and I’m going to give everything for the club to achieve something big.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *