Believe me, I was as critical as some of you lot still are after a few games last season. Of course, I want him to succeed but I won't let my national allegiance get in the way of hindering my favourite football team. You can dispute this all you like but people that know me in real life would all vouch for this. The fact that I'm Swedish means that I watched him up close to a further extent than most of you have. I see his qualities in the national side and how he's being utilized there in one of the most solid defences in International football and how he's bit by bit has started to bring that to United.
I still believe he needs a better defender next to him than Smalling, preferably someone with experience who he can learn from like he did from Luisao at Benfica and Granqvist in the national side.
The fact you called him arguably our best defensive player this season, while Smalling - who has had to literally hold his hand and cover his mistakes since he came here - is a calamity means that you're not being objective at all.
Lindelof has played some good games in the last 6 weeks or so, great performance against Juve and deserved to be nominated for PoTM, but at this point he gets praised for not playing badly.
However his games against Watford, Wolves & West Ham (Why do they all start with W?) stand out as being particularly poor recently - since then he has definitely kicked on and his form has improved in the last 4/5 games for sure. The problem is that his good games are just as common as his average/bad games, which highlights a consistency problem or suggests that he's simply an average player who has purple patches of good form, either way - it's not good enough.
16 months into his United career and he's hardly set the place alight, and we need to get to the point where we have so many defenders who need other defenders in order to excel.
At 24 he's hardly a youth player, he's an experienced international who needs to be able to step up to the level required consistently, regardless of who his partner is.