By Urban Newton
(@urban_newton)
We are now eight games into the new Premier League season and matchday nine is upon us. But we are yet to see a complete performance from a single one of the division’s heavyweight centre-backs. Not one.
Is this just how it is going to be now?
Who are supposedly the top three centre-halves in our top-flight? Virgil van Dijk, Aymeric Laporte and Harry Maguire? Seems about right. It is right going by transfer value anyway.
Laporte has been injured since Manchester City’s 4-0 win over Brighton at the start of September. Nicolas Otamendi and Fernandinho have thus been the most common partnership, with John Stones unsurprisingly having regular injury setbacks too.
The ageing, out-of-position Fernandinho is not worthy of a mention here but let us look at Otamendi.
Otamendi plays like he is one of the best defenders in world football. He probably thinks he is one of the best defenders in the world. But he is not one of the best defenders in the world.
He defends on the front foot, if that makes sense. He is more proactive than he is reactive. Every single time, he goes to ground and every single time he goes for the ball before it can reach an opposing recipient.
The man has no patience. He is rash. You can only assume that he thinks this style, this erratic nature, sets a good example to a squad lacking in example and leadership.
Yet, the only valid comparison that can be made of the Argentinian is to his fellow South American David Luiz: Silly. Clumsy. Unreliable.
Even before Laporte’s injury, did City not quite look right at the back. Though his performances declined year upon year before his departure, they need a Vincent Kompany. They need guidance.
When the first choice partnership of Laporte and Stones does return, we will see an improvement but not the stability and direction needed to take them to a Premier League title or that illusive Champions League trophy.
Harry Maguire is the most expensive defender of all-time. And that is absolutely ludicrous.
Maguire’s positioning off the ball, or lack thereof, is often overlooked. At Hull and Leicester, he was lauded for his rawness. He was a defender not afraid to carry the ball into midfield or hit a speculative diagonal pass.
He is still that same player now at the biggest football club in the world. But he still has that rawness. There is no discipline. Too much carelessness.
It is worth noting that he only seems to play well when his partner Victor Lindelof does too. You may think this is crude. Obviously a defender can perform better when his partner does. Yet, this is the most expensive defender of all-time. He should inspire teammates and provide whatever necessary to make them perform.
Virgil van Dijk, meanwhile, is apparently the best defender in the world.
He probably is but that does not say much about the competition. Sergio Ramos, Giorgio Chiellini, Milan Skriniar, Gerard Pique and Matthijs de Ligt, for example, have been very poor themselves this season.
Those players, including van Dijk, are supposed to control games from centre-half. The best central defenders command others around them. They set their team up when they do not have the ball. They can win the ball back themselves with ease and offload it into midfield with a sense of grace and decorum.
These defenders can actually dictate games. They can regulate games from where they are. You know when it has been their game.
Virgil van Dijk is not helped by his fullbacks, who have been non-existent when Liverpool have been out of possession. He has been isolated but that has really exposed his weakness at defending one-one-one this year.
There is even a very good argument that Joel Matip outshone the Dutchman is last season’s triumphant Champions League campaign.
So we have played eighty games so far in this Premier League season and not one has featured a convincing, complete and contemporary performance from one of the big names in the centre of defence.
In the past, we did not discuss just one of a defensive duo. Think Steve Bruce and Garry Pallister, Jamie Carragher and Sami Hyypia, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. All partnerships of equal quality.
I am not even asking for such a duo to actually come to fruition. I just want a game that is ran by one of these quality centre-halves. Where they read everything, win everything, organise everything, start everything, just take hold of a game by the scruff of the neck.
Is it really something too difficult to ask for? Or is football becoming increasingly furthermore top-heavy and weighted towards attacking and building towards it?
Is this just how it is going to be now?
By Urban Newton
(@urban_newton)
BehindClosedDoors 
Reblogged this on Urban Newton.
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