Manchester United are doing well this season – they won the League Cup, their first trophy in six years, they are on course to qualify for Champions League and are still in the race in the FA Cup and Europa League. The ones not doing so well this season are Liverpool.
Jurgen Klopp’s side is struggling, they are behind the likes of Aston Villa and Brighton, and have won mere 12 matches in the Premier League this season. Their performances in defence have often been shambolic, but in the midst of that, former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has made claims on Twitter in regards to Virgil van Dijk and Nemanja Vidic which caught the attention of many.
Carragher quoted one social media channel which suggested there has been a huge drop off in Van Dijk’s performances this season. The tweet compared Van Dijk with the best centre-backs in the Premier League, such as John Terry, Vincent Kompany, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. But Carragher quickly stood in Van Dijk’s defence, claiming he is ‘far better’ than Vidic ever was.
He was quick to remind everyone of Vidic’s poor performances against Liverpool’s Fernando Torres, mentioning that as his main argument why Van Dijk is actually better than Vidic ever was. Clearly, former Liverpool defender forgot plenty of ‘details’ which would take his argument to pieces and show he was criminally underrating the big Serbian.
For starters, even Rio Ferdinand got involved in this conversation on Twitter claiming Vidic did not have so many bad games against Torres. That is also what Vidic told Andy Mitten in a recent interview, saying he had one bad game against Torres while he was at Liverpool. Vida also suggested that the story has grown and the facts confirm that – Torres scored mere three goals in the 15 matches he played against Nemanja Vidic. To make a comparison, Virgil van Dijk and his teammates conceded three goals this season in a single match against Brighton’s Leandro Trossard.
But that was not all. Carragher made another bizzare claim, saying how in the Premier League ‘we have never spoken about other centre-backs being the best player before’, claiming that Van Dijk has been the best player in the league alongside Kevin de Bruyne for the past four years before this one. He also stresses this shows just how good Van Dijk’s level was.
And while no one is suggesting Van Dijk has not been so great for Liverpool in some of the previous campaigns, it is incorrect to say we have never spoken about other defenders being the best player in the league. The reason for that is that Nemanja Vidic himself was twice the Premier League Player of the Year winner. In fact, Vidic was able to be the best player in the league at the time when the Premier League probably had even more attacking quality – with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Robin van Persie, Fernando Torres, Dimitar Berbatov, Carlos Tevez, Nicolas Anelka, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney and others all in the league in 2008-09 and 2010-11, when Vidic won the award.
So maybe, just maybe, Jamie Carragher has gone too far in underestimating Nemanja Vidic’s accomplishments at Manchester United.
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