How do you solve a problem like Maguire?
He may be the captain, but he's gone from a rock to a liability
OPINION Champions League: Atalanta 2, United 2
Samuel Luckhurst, the chief United correspondent at the Manchester Evening News, had something to say today about Paul Pogba. ‘The why-does-Pogba-play-better-for-France question is not the head-scratcher some make it out to be,’ Luckhurst told his 250,000 followers on Twitter. ‘Pogba wants to play for France. He does not want to play for United. He and his agent have made that abundantly clear.’
Luckhurst is a good judge, if sometimes a harsh one when Pogba is in the dock. But his point raises a similar question about another United star. Why does Harry Maguire play better for England?
At Euro 2020 Maguire coped with just about everything Europe’s best players threw at him, yet at United he has gone from a rock to a liability. Since being rushed back from injury on October 16, this £78m centre-back had three shockers in five games. He was to blame for three of the four goals United shipped at Leicester, he was an accessory to the daylight robbery by Liverpool, and at Atalanta he repeatedly needed Eric Bailly to race to the rescue. Bailed out by Bailly! There’s a plot development we didn’t see coming.
To be fair, Maguire scored a vital goal in the first Atalanta game, with a polished shot, and he was good against Spurs, as United finally switched to a back three and his ability to bring the ball forward came in handy. When Bruno Fernandes and Cristiano Ronaldo concocted their delicious match-winning goal, Maguire was actually on the left wing, in a momentary swap with Luke Shaw. But it’s not the attacking side of his game that’s the problem.
Last season it was easy to say what his strengths were: positioning and organising. Never the quickest runner, he was nonetheless good at being in the right place at the right time, and, thanks to the empty stadiums, we could hear just how much he was bossing the other defenders. This season those strengths have turned to weaknesses: he keeps turning up in the wrong place, often colliding with Shaw, and the defence as a whole looks disorganised. He’s still yelling his head off, but it’s not working.
Is he knackered? It would be understandable as his 2020-21 season, which got off to a gruelling start with those charges in Greece, didn’t finish till the Euro penalty shoot-out, late in the evening of July 11. But if that’s the case, he should say so and ask for a breather, rather than regarding himself as indispensable (an impression reinforced by the silly decision to sit on the bench for the Europa final, when he was plainly unfit). Is he rattled by the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo, who is now United’s most obvious leader on the field? Or by Rafael Varane, now their most decorated defender?
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer insists that ‘nobody is undroppable’, but his actions say something else. It’s all too clear who his favourites are, and the man he appointed captain, with questionable haste, is one of them. As Varane – also rushed back from injury – has now pulled up lame again, it’s extra-hard to see Maguire missing out on the derby. If Solskjaer wants three at the back, which United need at the moment, he will presumably go for Bailly, Victor Lindelof and Maguire, although dear old Phil Jones is fit at last and Teden Mengi is good enough to come out of nowhere and produce the sort of performance Axel Tuanzebe pulled off against Neymar a year ago. Solskjaer, as so often, could do with showing more belief in the understudies.
If Maguire plays, it won’t just reduce United’s already slender chance of beating City. It will shake what remains of the fans’ faith in Solskjaer, and make you wonder how bad Maguire has to be to get dropped. There is, though, one way to make sure of a clean sheet: just give Edinson Cavani the full 90 minutes. At Atalanta, for the fourth game running (including Liverpool), no goals were conceded on his watch.