During a recent edition of the ‘WhatCulture Football Podcast,’ Adam Wilbourn, who hosts the podcast, and Manchester United fan Gareth Morgan spent some time discussing Red Devils centre-back Victor Lindelof.
It may be fair to say that the Red Devils have been enjoying an impressive run of form lately, as they are currently undefeated in each of their last 15 games in all competitions. Due to their impressive run of form, Wilbourn asked Morgan if a “solid central defender and a goalscoring forward” is all United “need to get” now.
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Morgan went on to discuss United’s Swedish centre-back Lindelof in response to this question, saying: “I’m so hesitant to throw Lindelof under the bus as a player and just say, ‘Oh he’s not good enough’.
“He’s shown glimpses – it feels like [Anthony] Martial for me, very similar case to Martial where some games, you look at him and think, ‘woah, that’s a world-beating centre-back there, he’s brilliant, he’s so composed on the ball, he can string it out left, right, and centre, his timing’s excellent’.
“Then he’ll have another game and you feel like it’s the second coming of John O’Shea or something, which – no offence to John O’Shea, but he’s not quite Nemanja Vidic.”
Can Manchester United improve on Victor Lindelof?YES
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TIF Thoughts…
John O’Shea enjoyed plenty of success during his time as a Manchester United player, making a total of 394 appearances for the club according to Transfermarkt and with that in mind, it may be fair to say that there is nothing wrong with being described as the “second coming of John O’Shea” and Morgan may have been somewhat disrespectful to the former Republic of Ireland international.
However, it’s clear that Morgan believes United need someone with more quality than Lindelof, who is currently valued at £25.2m according to Transfermarkt, at centre-back when he goes on to say that O’Shea was “not quite Nemanja Vidic”, who was twice named the Premier League Player of the Season during his time at Old Trafford.
Considering that WhoScored have given 13 other Manchester United players a higher average overall rating than Lindelof for the 2019/20 Premier League campaign, it may be hard to argue that United couldn’t improve on him and, therefore, Morgan may have a point in saying that the Red Devils could use more quality in the centre-back position.