Arsenal: This is what you get with David Luiz

David Luiz committed two major errors in Arsenal’s loss to Liverpool on Saturday. However, everyone knew this is the player the Gunners were signing when he arrived in the summer.

As soon as Arsenal committed £27 million to an 18-year-old defender who would not be at the club until next season, they immediately ceded having a solid group of centre-halves for the upcoming year. That then became even more accentuated when Laurent Koscielny kicked his toys out of the pram, the club captain eventually forcing an exit and a return to his native France.

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While Koscielny is now 33 and has a long history of injury problems, the latest of which is a ruptured Achilles, he was the best centre-half in the squad last season and was slated to start once again. Consequently, options in the centre of the defence were far from convincing.

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Arsenal, with little money having ploughed most of their resources into Nicolas Pepe and Kieran Tierney, needed to find a cheap centre-half who could start from day one. And so, in their slight desperation, they turned to Chelsea defender David Luiz, acquiring the flame-haired Brazilian for a very reasonable £8 million fee.

Luiz made his second start for the club at the weekend. It was a dismal 3-1 defeat to Liverpool in which Luiz made two critical errors that led directly to Mohamed Salah’s two second-half goals, ensuring the victory for the Merseysiders.

The first, he was pulled out of position, then caught the wrong side of Salah and couldn’t resist a tug at the Egptian’s shirt, conceding a stonewall penalty. The second occasion also came against Salah, this time getting too close to the Liverpool attacker, who lured him in before bursting past into the space in behind.

They were both very poor defensive moments from Luiz, and he has been widely criticised for his part in Arsenal’s Anfield demise. However, from the club’s perspective, there cannot be a shock or suprise with what occured on Saturday evening.

Luiz arrived in the summer as a mistake-riddled defender. Everyone knew who he was before he made the switch. This was not a surprise. And so, while it is justifiable to criticise Luiz for his poor performance, really, that more pertinent critique should be aimed at the club for anchoring their defence on an infamously unreliable commodity.

Now, this does not mean that signing Luiz was a mistake. £8 million is a very a decent fee. Arsenal did not have the £80 million to spend on an elite centre-half and they committed the long-term future of the position to Saliba, who will arrive next summer. So there was still plenty to like about how the club handled the centre-back position in the transfer window.

But their business dictates that these rough moments must be accepted. This was always going to happen, from the moment that Saliba was signed. Let’s just hope, then, that the short-term pain is worth the long-term gain.