United On Fire

Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic have formed the best centre-half partnership since Bruce and Pallister.  They say opposites attract, but it can’t be truer in football than with Ferdinand and Vidic.  When paired with someone like Silvestre, Ferdinand plays like Calamity Rio.  But with a solid man like Vidic (and Terry for England) Rio has played out of his skin.  

When Vidic first signed, fans initially were sceptical, but I never doubted he would be a star.  He just looks so hard.  He did make some mistakes, but gave away fouls by blocking the player instead of making a worse mistake of letting them through.  Gradually he adapted and became so strong.

The main reserves last season when either Rio or Vidic were Wes Brown and to a lesser extent, Heinze.  Neither exudes confidence in this position.  Wes is a sort of Mini-me of Rio, incredibly talented, but prone to make terrible mistakes.  Heinze’s style of complete commitment and throwing himself towards the player and ball to make a great tackle is good for full-back when the centre-back can cover, but at centre-back it is just too scary (see the Milan semi-final 2^nd leg last season for a example.

No, I’d look to our future for players next season, Jonny Evans and Gerard Pique now need first team experience to progress.  I’ve not seen enough of either of them, or reserve team captain, Craig Cathcart to judge them further.

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Posted on July 12th, 2007 under Manchester United, Position Debate • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback