Arsenal Transfers: Grading all 6 summer purchases

1. David Luiz — B

I’ve been a real Debbie Downer on the Daviz Luiz deal. And for the record, I do like the guy. He’s the kind of person you hate to play against but love to have. Those kinds of players are always welcome at the Emirates, in my sometimes-humble opinion.

What gives me trouble with this move is multi-faceted. For starters, we were linked to Dayot Upamecano, Joachim Andersen and Daniele Rugani. The former two I would have been over the moon about, the latter I’d have been cautiously optimistic about. All would be long-term solutions who have significant defensive chops.

We ended up on a 32-year-old defender whose biggest weakness is… defending. Sure, he plays the ball well, he manages the aerial game well, but for a team that already has Shkodran Mustafi fluffing his defensive lines, we just added another guy who does the same thing.

The only bright side I’ve found to this deal, and it’s becoming brighter the more I think about it, is that he essentially just replaced Laurent Koscielny. And honestly, in the span of starting this article yesterday to finishing it today, Luiz’s grade has gone up from a C to a B, so maybe by the end of today, I’ll be editing this to make it an A, who knows.

If nothing else, he was crazy cheap.