There's absolutely nothing in his game that justifies the fee we paid for him. He's a very bad fit for a side looking to play on the front foot. Put him in a negative team with lots of protection in front of him and a deep line and you'll get the best tune out of him, but in any situation where the game opens up and he's got to either compensate for his lack of acceleration or be totally committed in the challenge (thus risking being turned and spun around) and he becomes a liability in serious need of cover from a much more athletic partner.
It's rare I praise the guy because even when he does OK, it's what is expected of a player who is supposed to be the rock in and amongst a plethora of mediocre CB's we have at the club.
We can't offload him as there's no way we'd recoup the fee or anything close to it, so the answer is to pair him up with an immense physical specimen with intelligence, who will essentially hold his hand and bail him out in situations like yesterday.
Of course, first game back and not at full fitness/sharpness, but the same goes for everyone on the pitch, and still, it's the same characters making blunders synonomous with them irrespective of fitness. Maguire has to have the wit to cover for his own glaring weaknesses, and in particular, to position himself correctly and minimise the chances of exposure, and yet he does the opposite, which makes for two errors in one passage of play: initial positional blunder, and then the inability to cover his own mistake on the turn. All defenders worth their salt know their own limitations and work within a construct that marginalises mishap; the biggest letdown for me with Maguire is that he doesn't do this. I don't like my defenders to have slow acceleration, but it's not the be all and end all of a defender as players like Adams, Terry and Vidic displayed - you can still be immense and imperious if your positioning and utilisation of body contact and awareness is elite. Maguire does not sing from the hymn sheet slow - but elite - defenders know off by heart, and that's my biggest issue with him.
In the post game commentary the interviewer asked the Dutch lad who scored whether there was a plan in place to attack Maguire and expose his pace like had been seen in the international game between the respective countries. It has to be apparent that in top level clashes, particularly in the CL and internationals, Maguire is an obvious tactical inlet until his positioning proves to be impeccable. Perhaps it won't be an issue for the majority of our PL games where such a concerted effort to get at him can't be made (with us being the superior team disorientating the opposition), but it is something he needs to work on and study because being slow off the mark isn't the actual issue here; it's how those situations come about in the first place where he looks like an oil tanker, that is.
Shaw and De Gea were dire in that passage of play, too, but if Maguire had made the correct decision that shot on goal wouldn't have even occurred and he'd just be giving Shaw a swift bollocking for being a dope - ala Vidic style.
I should hope this is the last of such ill-considered actions on his part for the season - there's no need for it and it's down to him to improve and have his lack of acceleration be an afterthought rather than a talking point.