Victor Lindelof should have made Manchester United’s final Harry Maguire transfer decision easier

Here's a quiz question that shouldn't take too long to answer: Which Premier League club has a fifth-choice central defender who cost £80million and is still club captain?

The answer, of course, is Manchester United. The question isn't designed to denigrate Harry Maguire. More to point out how unsustainable a situation this is. Maguire remains a central defender worthy of the Premier League. His performances for England are still good. He just can't get a consistent run of games for United.

A fresh start might free Maguire from the status as he has developed as a pantomime villain. If it's just about understandable that some United fans are critical of him, his treatment from England supporters and the wider football public is just odd.

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It's worth considering how much criticism Maguire would be getting this week if he'd produced a performance as poor as Fikayo Tomori's for AC Milan against Inter in the Champions League semi-final first leg. Tomori is the cause celebre for anyone who wants another English central defender picked ahead of Maguire.

He has huge potential, but it's hard to imagine Maguire being as positionally poor as Tomori was at the San Siro and being run ragged by a striker such as Edin Dzeko. Maguire is now 30 but there aren't many English central defenders better than him and he could do a good job for at least half of the Premier League.

But that half doesn't include the club he's currently employed at. His style of defending is ill-suited to Erik ten Hag's game plan and over the last 18 months there have been too many mistakes and too many misjudgements to ever consistently force his way back in.

If Maguire was holding out hope of