Is he good positionally though? I seem to remember him losing Giroud and De Jong in our semi finals losses last season in fairly inexplicable mistakes (not knowing where the big guy in the box is). He's not very good at dealing with ball over his shoulder into the channel too.
He makes as many errors as Bailly quite frankly, the only difference is that Bailly's look absolutely kamikaze when they do happen.
Yes. He's very good positionally. Don't you find it incredibly strange how a guy that is slow, weak, terrible in the air and positionally poor can inexplicably keep some of the best attacking teams in the world quiet?
No, he really doesn't. The difference is Bailly isn't called up on the small things Lindelof is. Take Fulham for example. There's a lot of similarities for us to take from it.
For their goal, Bailly completely switches off, leaves a gaping whole in the middle of our CBs, and Lookman meanders through the middle to put it in the net. The blame? Well, that was put at the feet of Maguire and Pogba by many. Even AWB was at considered at fault. Yet we have a remarkably similar situation against Liverpool, a team Lindelof successfully shut out half a week before, where the midfield puts no pressure whatsoever on the man on the ball, Salah runs off Shaw, leaving Lindelof completely exposed to a player running in behind at full pace. The majority of the blame is placed at Lindelofs feet. Why? What was the difference? Did Bailly get half a dozen pages questioning his ability? No. In fact, Ole was roundly criticized for putting Lindelof in the starting XI ahead of him, a game that Lindelof was defensively flawless in.
The Loftus-Cheek chance was also remarkably similar to Liverpools first goal. The ball was played into their CF, Bailly allowed him to receive the ball at feet, turn and play a pass in between Maguire and Shaw, and if we're being honest, RLC should've scored. If Lindelof had been Maguire or Bailly in that situation, it doesn't matter which one, he would've been criticized for either being too passive in closing the CF down, or for allowing RLF to get in behind. It genuinely baffles me why so many go out of their way to look so damn hard at Lindelof to find fault, while giving others a free pass.