Ferdinand names Solskjaer’s “biggest concern” at Manchester United

Manchester United have had many legendary defenders in their team over the club’s storied history. Rio Ferdinand was certainly one of them.

Alongside Serbian great Nemanja Vidic, Ferdinand formed an incredible defensive duo at Old Trafford and perhaps the best centre-back pairing of the Premier League era.

Regarded by many as one of England’s greatest ever players, Ferdinand now works as a pundit and clearly, whenever it is something related to Manchester United, fans wait for what he has to say regarding the matter.

One of the biggest areas of discussion regarding this current team has been their defence. While they have improved significantly over the past couple of months and are now keeping clean-sheets on a consistent basis, it is clear that there are still certain areas which they can get much better at.

Rio Ferdinand has concerns over Manchester United captain

While speaking on his YouTube channel Rio Ferdinand Presents Five about a week ago, he pointed out what he believes is the “biggest concern” for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer right now – leaving either Harry Maguire or Victor Lindelof one v one on the halfway line, as pace is not neither one’s main attribute. As reported by Mirror, he said:

"“I think that’s Ole’s biggest concern – can he leave Maguire one v one on the halfway line? Or Lindelof?“It’s proven that you can’t as that’s not their main attributes.“Harry Maguire is good at a lot of other things but that area, that’s one of his weak points.”"

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Manchester United signed Harry Maguire from Leicester City for a transfer fee of £80 million, a world record for a defender. While he has settled in decently well since then, questions have been raised about him at times as well.

At the start of the season, it had looked like defence was going to be a massive worry for them through the course of the campaign. But the backline deserves a lot of credit for the improvement that they have shown in recent times, despite the odd poor performance here and there.

Even then, it is expected that the club will sign another centre-back in the summer as Maguire’s defensive partner. In this regard, a wide variety of names have been linked with the club including the likes of Sergio Ramos, Raphael Varane, Jules Kounde, Nikola Milenkovic, Gianluca Mancini and Manuel Akanji, just to name a few.