Vidic played half a season next to Jonny Evans when Ferdinand was injured and they got the EPL record for most clean sheets in a row (13) winning 11 of them.
Yes, and Rio played a season next to Evans after Vidic did his cruciate and they were terrible.
That fiasco against Everton cost them the title, not to mention the 6-1 against City.
Vidic above Rio? That's interesting. I've always thought the consensus among United fans was Rio was your best CB in the PL era.
Only by people who don't understand defending.
The only explanation I can think of for Rio being rated higher is that most fans didn't watch every game and mainly watched the Champions League games. Rio was very inconsistent but usually raised his game for the big games. The Champions League games were also far less physical which suited him better.
Week to week, when you need consistent top class defending, Vidic was peerless in the EPL for almost a decade.
The United defence with and without Vidic was like chalk and cheese. The defence was a mess without him. When Rio was out, they broke the EPL record.
It makes me laugh when the Torres thing keeps being brought up with Vidic. It was one game, and actually one mistake. Torres rarely troubled Vidic outside of that. Meanwhile, Rio regularly struggled against the likes of Heskey, Kevin Davies, Duncan Ferguson and Craig Bellamy. Drogba caused him huge problems too.
Vidic and Stam were levels above Rio in everything but self promotion.