Chris and Phil are keeping new boys on the subs bench
GARY Neville summed it up before kick-off against West Brom on Sunday: “If you look at that back five today then they were all there when Sir Alex Ferguson was at the club. They’ve signed eight defenders in the last four or five years and not one of them is in the team today.”
Not even Victor Lindelof, who has hardly put a foot wrong in recent weeks, has been able to get back into the side.
Rather than that being down to the once jittery Swede’s form, it has been owed to the brilliance of two often underrated stalwarts at the back. Chris Smalling and Phil Jones.
That partnership is quickly emerging as one of the stories of United’s season. It is easy to forget that many assumed Lindelof, like Eric Bailly 12 months previously, would immediately slot into Jose Mourinho’s starting line-up.
Jones had other ideas and every time a dreaded injury appears to set him back, he bounces back in now trademark style. Some of those lastditch tackles against Bournemouth and West Brom were incredible for a defender who has missed a month of football.
Then there is Smalling, who is remarkably into his eighth season at Old Trafford.
The focus has been on the 28-year-old’s ability on the ball of late following Gareth Southgate’s recent comments. The England manager revealed that he picked both John Stones and Harry Maguire ahead of him because they were ‘even better’ with their feet.
That will not have necessarily hurt Smalling. Jose Mourinho, remember, joked with him that ‘with your feet, we’re for sure not playing out from the back’ ahead of the Europa League final.
But it has given him a goal, a purpose, to prove that his rugged, puff-your-chest-out defending and vocal leadership are as relevant in modern football as a defencesplitting pass from the back.
United are reaping the benefits – Smalling’s herculean effort at the back against West Brom saw him deservedly end the game with the captain’s armband – and the Greenwich lad has rightly started each of the last 18 games.
Tellingly, when Mourinho reverted to his favoured four-man backline, it was Smalling who kept his place and Lindelof who dropped out. That is not down to Lindelof being a bad signing; it is because Smalling has been reliably solid of late.
But, as always, Neville does have a point.
Since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, Luke Shaw (£27m), Marcos Rojo (£16m), Daley Blind (£14m), Matteo Darmian (£12.7m), Eric Bailly (£30m) and Victor Lindelof (£30.7m) have all been signed. Of those, Bailly has been the one resounding success.