That would all be fine
@Lentwood if that were even the argument I was making.
We didn’t ‘ship goals at a rate of knots’ without him to end last season, the only game we conceded above the average we did with him was against Liverpool when they scored 4, we literally played a B team against Leicester & conceded 2 otherwise we conceded the goal a game a Maguire defence is known to do. Who started alongside Bailly & shipped 5 goals in 2 legs against Roma again?
This is the issue when people cherry pick, he’s not bad all the time - far from it but I don’t get this defence that because we’re absolutely shit without him that being shit with him is somehow acceptable. The premise of argument acts as if we haven’t had multiple windows to rectify his contemporaries & him. The compelling reasons to drop him are rather stark, the issue is when we do there are no decent alternatives. We can be bad with Maguire & bad without him, they’re not mutually exclusive.
Somehow you’ve skewed my post into a ‘drop Harry for X’ which unfortunately isn’t possible due to lack of quality alternatives. Are you saying I shouldn’t criticise Maguire for his poor performances because others CBs perform poorly too?
We’ll have to disagree on the 5/6 CBs point. Tactics, or a lack there of, certainly play their role but instances like the one against Burnley aren’t tactical he’s simply irrational when it comes to certain aspects of his defending.
This is a tri-annual topic with this guy, surely that tells us something. Yes the board can be reactionary but there are posts from 18 months ago in the ‘sell’ thread telling people to get behind him & saying he was just in bad form then. I’d love to have a great English CB, unfortunately we do not.