Chelsea should have no qualms about selling David Luiz to Arsenal
By George Perry
If anything, the Gunners should fear this move more than Chelsea. Some Arsenal fans already do.
Chelsea have never been much for following the unofficial rules and conventional wisdom around the transfer market. Desperately need reinforcements? Absolutely call off the deal over a £3 million disagreement. Sell to your rivals? Sure, Manchester United can have Juan Mata and Nemanja Matic.
The Blues should not help Jose Mourinho any more by selling Willian to United, even though they must sell him this summer. But if Arsenal wants to buy David Luiz, it’s almost all up side for Chelsea.
A clear sign this is a wonderful idea is how much many Arsenal fans oppose it. Our colleagues at Pain in the Arsenal wasted no time in trying to put an end to this rumour. Their reasons for not wanting David Luiz at the Emirates are almost verbatim our reasons for not wanting him at Stamford Bridge. He is an undisciplined, “pointless,” “novelty” act well on the wrong side of 30.
Chelsea did not strengthen Arsenal the last time they sold them an aging player. Cech was 33 years old when he arrived at Arsenal, two years older than Luiz. But as a goalkeeper, Cech was still in his prime years, causing many to fear the Blues were dangerously violating the “never sell to your rival” rule. However, those concerns did not fully account for Arsenal’s defence. While at Chelsea, Cech kept clean-sheets in 46% of his games. At Arsenal, that has dropped to 38%. Worse, though, is his goals conceded per game: .8 at Chelsea, 1.1 as a Gunner.
Petr Cech can not be relishing the prospect of reuniting with Luiz. Luiz would create more gaps in Arsenal’s defence, creating even more work for the similarly-experienced (read: old) Sokratis and Stephan Lichsteiner.
This is one of those rare situations where players with complementary skill sets work against each other. Luiz’s movement and tendency to play the ball demands highly mobile defenders to play alongside him, since they will need to move all over the pitch to compensate for Luiz moving all over the pitch. A sturdy, resolute defender can only do so much when Luiz goes on one of his adventures. Arsenal would need a highly mobile, responsive defender who had the tactical acumen and physical attributes necessary to compensate for his teammate. Chelsea at least have Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rudiger, but they have better things to do on the back-line than babysit Luiz.
Selling Luiz to Chelsea would rid Chelsea of a disrespectful discontent, bring in a nominal amount of cash to apply towards a winger or goalkeeper, and would further weaken a cross-town rival. And it would make Arsenal Twitter and Arsenal Fan TV even more banter-rific than usual.
Next: Maybe Chelsea are staging all this for a Griezmann-esque reality show
If Chelsea are not going to sign any new players this summer, they should at least sell the ones who need to go. This one is too easy to pass up, which means it is probably too good to be true.