Dan Burn and Kai Havertz exchanging pleasantries over a drink? They are the last Premier League pairing you might expect to see being sociable with one another, having had multiple run-ins on the pitch, but in an exclusive chat with FourFourTwo, Burn let slip that the two bumped into each other while on pre-season this summer.
This wasn’t the first time they’ve ‘bumped into one another’. In Burn’s first season at Newcastle, he was on the receiving end of a Kai Havertz elbow that left him needing stitches.
Havertz, ranked at no.45 in FourFourTwo's list of the best Premier League players of last season, avoided a red card and added insult to injury by stealing in ahead of Burn in the last minute to win that game 1-0. The pair tangled again at St. James’ Park later that year when Newcastle beat Chelsea 1-0.
"Kai Havertz, my guy"
Exactly 12 months after that, Havertz, now at Arsenal, was again lucky not to be red-carded, this time for a late tackle on Sean Longstaff. Burn didn’t need an invitation onto the scene to defend his fellow Geordie.
Burn recently made reference to the feud by sarcastically saying "Kai Havertz, my guy" while doing a quiz for a social media video on Newcastle’s official Instagram account, shooting a look to someone off camera, with laughter audible in the background.
But FourFourTwo can exclusively reveal that the Havertz-Burn discord was put to bed a month earlier, with Burn explaining that the pair buried the hatchet over a pre-season drink. “He's actually, frustratingly enough, quite a nice guy. I had a drink with him and he's actually sound.
“I saw him in pre-season when we played in Singapore. We had time where we could go and have a few drinks, and we saw some of the Arsenal lads. I just got chatting to him. We both said to each other, 'That's just the way it is when we play,' we've just got to be at that sort of level.”
Later in the November 2023 game, Burn landed heavily and broke a bone in his back. Amid an injury crisis, he rushed back to help the team, missing only 38 days.
“I really wanted to come back and help the team because I knew we were struggling with injuries at the time, but the reality was that I was physically miles away from where I needed to be and just trying to push myself through it. I had a few bad games.
“I think we played Forest, Woody [Chris Wood] had scored a hat-trick against us, and I'd had a bad game. Then that Luton game. I remember playing against [Chiedozie] Ogbene, and he's lightning quick.
“That's always going to happen as a player of my size playing as a full-back, there's going to be times when I'm taken on just because that's just the way it is. But I was struggling.
“That’s happened a lot of times in my career. It's not like the first, and it won't be the last. You build that resilience where you just go again. You just keep going.
“I feel like that's where I've outlasted a lot of players who either came through with me or are the same age as me. There's always been a point where fans have jumped on one player for one reason or another, like it was Longy [Sean Longstaff] for a long time, or it was me, or it was Joelinton.
“But I said when I signed, I wasn't just going to be a stop-gap signing. I knew the perception when I came here was that we’d stay up and then we'd bring someone else in and then I wouldn't play.
“I feel like every year I've exceeded expectations and even now there's people I know that are going to be sitting there saying I that I shouldn't be playing, or even if I go back to centre-half, Sven [Botman] should play in front of me, but I've got confidence and the experience and believe that I should be playing and I'll continue to do that.”
After under-par performances at West Ham and vs Brentford, where he was sent off, Burn returned at the centre of defence vs Everton to help Newcastle record their first away win in seven months. Burn has made all five of Thomas Tuchel’s England squads, with only one to go until the German decides who he will take to the 2026 World Cup, meaning Burn is in a strong position to be on the plane to North America.
Read more from Dan Burn’s exclusive chat with FourFourTwo in our issue on sale in shops this Thursday, or you can buy online now with free delivery HERE
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