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Victor Lindelof has now performed seven seasons at Manchester United, making 259 appearances throughout all competitions.
Signed from Benfica by Jose Mourinho in the summertime of 2017, the centre again often known as “the Iceman” was speculated to be United’s principal centre again for years to return.
It has by no means actually labored out this fashion nonetheless; he has persistently fallen down the pecking order because the membership appear to herald a minimum of one new centre again in each summer time window.
Underneath Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the Swede was a primary workforce common alongside Harry Maguire however with the signing of Raphael Varane in 2021, his affect within the first workforce started to wane.
The signing of Lisandro Martinez a yr later and the acquisition of Leny Yoro this summer time solely appears to have decreased the Swede’s possibilities of taking part in a major function on the membership.
In his favour, Lindelof is a level-headed skilled who has a plethora of expertise of senior membership and worldwide soccer at 30 years outdated.
He can decide a go and could be fairly harmful raking lengthy balls for the pacy forwards of Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford to run onto.
At his greatest, he is usually a calming affect on the defence and has repeatedly performed over 30 instances a season for the Pink Devils since becoming a member of.
Sadly there are a lot of weaknesses to the Swedish captain’s recreation.
In all probability his greatest difficulty is simply how passive he’s as a defender. United followers love the uncooked power of Lisandro Martinez and even Harry Maguire, for all his faults, can get caught in.
Maybe it’s an outdated idea but it surely feels like every defender within the Premier League who will not be significantly pro-active should excel at quite a few different points of the artwork of defending. Sadly for Lindelof, he doesn’t.
The previous Benfica man is repeatedly bullied by bodily centre forwards and infrequently appears to have the abdomen for a battle.
This over-cautiousness tends to present attackers an excessive amount of time and within the extremely excessive commonplace of the England’s high division, that is punished all too typically.
The defender can be bodily weak in comparison with quite a few different defenders within the league. “In 2022, he was dispossessed a median of 1.4 instances per recreation, highlighting his susceptibility to shedding the ball in duels with opponents. Sadly, this difficulty continued into 2023, with Lindelof being dispossessed a median of 1.6 instances per recreation.”
Pundits through the years have famous these obtrusive defensive points as Paul Scholes claimed that he “lacked authority” and Jamie Carragher claimed to “really feel sorry” for the defender as he was “out of his depth” taking part in for Manchester United.
In years passed by, Lindelof might even have been a suitable again up however with Yoro, Martinez, Maguire, Jonny Evans and presumably Matthijs de Ligt, if United can attain an settlement with Bayern Munich, there may be merely no house for the Scandinavian.
It has been reported right here that the Pink Devils are working arduous to promote the defender and in a summer time the place each penny counts with PSR restrictions, even a small charge might be helpful for United in buying a goal that Erik ten Hag would worth considerably extra.
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