Graeme Souness sounds off on Arsenal's signing of Kai Havertz amid praise of David Raya in net

Graeme Souness heavily criticised Arsenal's signing of Kai Havertz but had words of praise for keeper David Raya.

Havertz is yet to shine at Arsenal after the Gunners  splashed out £65m (€75m/$81m) to bring him in from Chelsea. He has failed to register a goal or an assist and Souness has questioned Arsenal's rationale in signing the German star who has scored just 19 times in three years in the Premier League during his stint with Chelsea.

Not all of Arsenal’s spending makes sense to me. They’ve laid out £65million on Kai Havertz. Surely you’re not spending that kind of money on what he’s shown at Chelsea in the past three seasons?" he wrote in his column for Daily Mail.

They’ve shelled out in the hope that Mikel Arteta can get a very, very different tune out of him than Frank Lampard, Thomas Tuchel or Graham Potter ever did. Good luck with that one, Mikel, he added. Souness, however, believes that Arsenal have done the right thing by signing David Raya from Brentford and he believes that the competition with Aaron Ramsdale will only bring out the better from the two keepers.

I like the fact that David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale are competing for the goalkeeper’s jersey and certainly do not subscribe to this modern view that you ‘make the goalkeepers nervous’ by having them vying for the spot," he said.

Nervous? Oh diddums! Are you seriously going to tell me next that Ramsdale, who’s missed out in the past two matches, should be heading straight to Arsenal’s HR department? If someone challenges the established goalkeeper, then so much the better, he opined. Arsenal will be back in action on Sunday in the London derby against Tottenham.