Former Chelsea defender Frank Leboeuf has hit out at the club’s big summer signing Kai Havertz as his unconvincing form continues.
Chelsea were beaten 2-1 by Wolves last night and Havertz was disappointing and quiet on the night, with Leboeuf clearly very unimpressed with what he’s seen from the Germany international so far.
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The Frenchman has been critical of Havertz before, and he says he is very concerned not just about his lack of quality, but also his seeming lack of effort on the pitch.
“(Havertz was) almost invisible,” Leboeuf told ESPN, as quoted by the Metro.
“I touched on the point some weeks ago. We heard Frank Lampard say, ‘no, we need to give him time’.
“But I don’t know, it’s something that I don’t like, the way sometimes it feels like he’s not there, that he’s not trying to compensate for a lack of confidence with a desire or just being a warrior, showing us that, ‘okay, I’m not good at the moment, but I’m going to fight for the club and not be invisible.’
“We share texts during the game and we were wondering if he was on the field. You can be bad – (Timo) Werner didn’t have a good game – but we saw him trying to get something going.
“We don’t see Havertz getting anything. I’m very concerned about that guy.
“I don’t forget the price they paid and I know he’s only 21 but we see players who arrived last summer who didn’t need much time to adapt and being very influential.
“I don’t understand what Havertz is doing right now but I want answers.”
The 21-year-old looked hugely promising at former club Bayer Leverkusen, but there’s no doubt he’s not living up to expectations so far.
That said, Leboeuf is perhaps being a bit harsh on a young player who is still settling in in a new team in a new league, and one that also contains a number of other new signings recently put together by a relatively inexperienced manager.
Havertz might be capable of better, but it seems over the top to suggest the blame is all his own here.