Douglas Luiz is the best Aston Villa midfielder, £30m Arsenal bid was right to be laughed off
Aston Villa took a huge gamble last summer when they rejected a £30m bid from Arsenal for Douglas Luiz despite having a year left on his deal.
The Athletic reported on deadline day last year that Villa rejected three bids from the Gunners, despite the potential of losing him on a free transfer a year later if he didn’t renew his contract.
The Brazilian wasn’t really in the plans of Steven Gerrard having fallen out of favour and an exit looked really likely.
We hit October though and a surprise announcement arrived that Luiz had signed a new long-term deal at Villa Park, and then a month later that was followed by Gerrard’s departure and the arrival of Unai Emery.
Ever since then though Luiz has emerged as one of the most important and key members of the squad at Villa Park, and it now looks like a masterstroke to have rejected such big money for a midfielder who looked on the verge of an exit.
According to the stats on WhoScored for this season, Luiz is proving his worth as the best midfielder at the club.
No midfielder has played more games this season of the four central midfield options, with Luiz having more starts and more minutes than any alternatives.
He’s also got more goals than all of them combined (4-1) and more assists than each of them combined (5-4). His pass success rate of 86.6% is only bettered by Leandro Dendoncker’s 88.8%, and his aerial duels success rate of 0.7 per game is only bettered by Boubacar Kamara’s 1 per game.
His strength is certainly his passing, and he dominates in that phase of play among his teammates which is what helps Aston Villa to control games so much more than they used to.
He makes 1.2 key passes per game in comparison to 0.3 per game for Dendoncker and Kamara, or 0.6 for captain John McGinn.
He also averages more passes per game with 45.8, and is a key playmaker in the side. With £30m in today’s market, Luiz would be incredibly difficult to replace.
There is no way that the club would have been able to find someone to come in and directly replace Luiz on such short notice.
They hedged their bets on convincing him to be part of the project long-term and it’s worked wonders.
If a team were to come calling this summer then Aston Villa would be well within their rights to demand at least double the £30m they turned down, and he’d be worth every penny of it.
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