Arsenal fans are asking the wrong Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres question

The big, unanswerable debate: who should start at Arsenal - Viktor Gyokeres or Kai Havertz?

It divides opinion more than politics, more than religion, more than pizza topics. You can't sit on the fence with this one, and it tells any Arsenal fan a lot about your footballing philosophy.

However, the question is wrong. We're trying to answer a question that's become outdated over the last few weeks, and if we simply reframe the way we look at the conundrum, it unravels itself in the best possible way.

Arsenal fans have got the Viktor Gyokeres and Kai Havertz debate all wrong

We don't need to ask which player should start games; we need to start asking which player should finish games.

Kai Havertz doesn't start over Viktor Gyokeres because he's better. He starts over Gyokeres because he's better at starting games.

That's not an insult to Gyokeres, either. You could very easily flip the clauses and say that Gyokeres starts on the bench because he's better at finishing games than Havertz.

Recognising one's strengths doesn't highlight the other's weaknesses. Havertz and Gyokeres are completely different strikers, and it's high time Arsenal fans stopped acting like they were.

Arsenal's strength is that they can rotate between Gyokeres and Havertz, and that's exactly what they do. Havertz seems to be starting more league games, but that doesn't mean Gyokeres doesn't get minutes.

Every great team has featured striker rotation

I am by no means comparing Havertz and Gyokeres to the following examples - I feel like I need to point that out as a disclaimer, but alas.

Every great team has had two dependable options they could call upon at centre forward. In Man United's prime, they had both Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez. Chelsea had both Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka, Bayern Munich had Mario Mandzukic and Mario Gomez, Man City had Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus. The list goes on and on.

Mikel Arteta manages the centre-forward load well. There is a lot of talk about how he fails to rest Declan Rice, but he doesn't have the same issue at centre-forward. Long-term, this healthy competition should help the two players avoid injury, but even if the worst happens, Arsenal have a third option that nobody really talks about.

Mikel Merino is more than capable of slotting in at centre-forward if needed. He hasn't been playing there this season, but he's proven to Arsenal and Spain that he is a dependable option to call on from the bench.

Add us as a preferred source on Google