Kieran Tierney and David Luiz will likely conclude our transfer business. by Konstantin Mitov
It’s the final day of the transfer window lovely Arsenal people, and by the time this article gets posted, David Luiz and Kieran Tierney might already be Arsenal players. And to get the elephant out of the room, it’s obvious the Chelsea CB is not quite the CB signing people expected.
He’s old, has made some notable mistakes and is not really a long-term solution to our defensive worries. But in the grand scheme of things, if you ask the question with or without David Luiz, in our current state of the defence I’d take him. I’m not trying to make a case for him here, nor do I think he will fix our problems, but bear with me, I have some arguments.
Right now we have Mustafi, Sokratis, Monreal (but only as a dire need backup imo) and a bunch of young players. With Koscielnys disrespectful way of leaving (good riddance honestly), we’re really short of experience. This defence needs fresh faces, even if it is just to light up the mood a little bit. When you put the same bunch of players again and again and expect different results, you are getting nowhere. Chambers doesn’t look like the answer and expecting Holding to magically fix our defence when he’s been out for such a long time is a stretch.
Now if you think about it Luiz has won a lot of trophies (sadly with Chelsea), but his experience could benefit us. He also is a player who knows this league and doesn’t cost a fortune. His passing is better than Mustafis and he’s a threat with headers. His age doesn’t help and the last old player we took from Chelsea didn’t really work out (Cech) but throwing negativity at Luiz before he’s even joined is unfair.
The question of whether Emery and the board should’ve prioritised a new CB is a whole other topic. We signed Saliba for the future, but for now the prices of a decent CB are insane. Maguire is a lovely player but 80 million is not something we can pay upfront on a EL budget. Center backs come at a premium, but in truth we weren’t that far away from the top 4.
The addition of Tierney will be a welcome sight. We are in need of better full backs. Monreal is old, Kolasinac is not interested in defending and on the other side Bellerin’s injury is still a problem, and AMN highlighted against Barcelona he’s not the answer either yet. He just has lapses in concentration which ruin his game.
This summer we chose to address the problem of having no wingers by signing Pepe and Martinelli. We’ve also added Ceballos who should fill the Ramsey void. As you can see there are a lot of problems to be addressed, but at least the board showed some intent. I’ve seen transfer windows where we only needed 2 players, which were never added and I like what I see now.
We also demanded fees for Bielik, Jenkinson and Koscielny. In other times we’d have them sold for peanuts. I’d say this transfer window is positive (assuming that we do the two deals mentioned). The Newcastle game is knocking on the door and I don’t expect a lot of new faces to feature, but we really need to win this game. It’s interesting whether the likes of Nelson or Willock start? We have more than enough quality going forward. We need to build confidence and the best way of doing that is by getting the results.
Konstantin