I disagree completely. He's been labelled a fridge by social media. His transfer fee gets brought up in every conversation on Sky Sports. He gets bashed a lot by opposition fans, and by some of his own fans. Lindelof gets bashed because he's been here quite a few years now and never really been anything other than 6/10 at best, and often found being outmuscled, outstrengthed, out jumped, out paced. He's also had very little say on our form, or fortunes. He just plays through it whether we're 7th or 1st and has very little dramatically positive impacts. I think most fans can acknowledge he is not a top level CB. He would be playing week in week out at a Southampton, a Villa, he'd probably get in Arsenal's team. Thats about it.
Social media is it's own world mate and I have to admit I'm an old fart and don't partake, I know he gets criticism on here and I've called him a fridge myself, but from the commentary and analysis I see he is hardly ever to blame, it's always Lindelof or De Gea, and there just isn't the level of fee beatdown Pogba has received, it's standard English player protection though unless it's Sterling, but that's a different topic.
I'm purely comparing Maguire to Vidic in a pace comparison, nothing else. I did say this in my previous post. I don't understand your view that Maguire wasn't good enough v's West Brom. What did he do that wasn't good enough? He was defensively solid apart from when he was illegally fouled, drove us forward, almost won us a penalty, almost scored the winner. If that header flys in at the end, the whole world would be posting how his leadership made a difference. We're back to where we were about 6 posts ago. Where did he pretend he was Baresi? When did he accept zero blame? He regularly comes out and says "we weren't good enough", which is literally the definition of taking blame.
When you summon the demon Vidic mate you have to examine everything he brought to the table to balance out his lack of pace, it wasn't like Rio protected him, he was a great CB for us when he partnered with Evans, O'Shea or Brown as well, not just with Rio. In the West Brom game as a big CB who is the supposed leader he should have made sure he didn’t leave Lindelof against a striker who was their only threat and whose main attribute is strength.
I want to see less "we" and more individual self awareness when he’s at fault, like against Everton.
We've won more without him because of the cycle of the team and the management. We won more with Ashley Young playing every week but I can categorically list you 8-9 players in our current line up that is a level above Ashley Young. You can't just say Maguire is inferior because since he's been here we've not won anything. If that's the case, Steven Gerrard isn't as good as Darren Fletcher.
Sure but you have to also look at the fact we are the worst side in the top 10 for goals conceded and he's the supposed kingpin of the defense. At any rate I know he'll be a nailed on starter for as long as Ole is manager hopefully we can revisit this in a years time with the signing we need having been made and you giving me an "I told you so" speech.
The only reason I keep posting in this thread, is because he's unfairly bashed when he puts decent performances out. That's the bottom line. The post-match knee-jerkers (not you, for what its worth!) annoy me and I take them on and reply saying "No Maguire is not awful", he played alright. And then it spirals every time
Haha! Well I can say from my end I always enjoy a civil debate and this has been that.