Arsenal: 3 problems with letting David Luiz walk away

2. Veteran presence

What Luiz brought to the club, aside from his resurgent defending, was his veteran presence. Here, at the core of the defense, we had a guy who had won pretty much everything. He was a trophy-holic and he figured to guide this next wave of young talent for one more year until they could take control for themselves.

Granted, that “young wave” was composed solely of Calum Chambers and William Saliba at the moment, with Chambers already being kind of a veteran. Still, it would have been incredibly useful to have someone of Luiz’s caliber back there, as we saw this year.

Luiz is a general. He commands that backline, he has a monstrous presence, and we’re losing that if he leaves. Sokratis doesn’t have that. Mustafi doesn’t have that. Mari doesn’t have that. No one will be able to replicate that easily, even if I believe that Chambers can get there in time,

So what do you do? That’s the question Arteta needs to ask. Does he trust his defense in the hands of less-established defenders or does he do something like No. 1…