“I know everybody says he’s important to me. He’s important to us. It’s us, not me” — Gareth Southgate.

Harry Maguire is at a professional crossroads. Where once he was the defensive linchpin for England and Manchester United, he now finds himself dropped from his club’s starting line-up and his place in the national team is a point of debate. 

“Why do we pick him? Because he’s one of the players who gives us the best chance of winning,” said Southgate earlier this month when questioned about Maguire’s continued selection.

“We should all be wanting a Harry Maguire who’s playing regularly and with confidence. That applies to quite a few players, but he’s the one everything lands on, which must be a tough space for him. But he’s showing tremendous character.”

A good Maguire is a boon to club and country, but he hasn’t been that player for an extended period of time. If Southgate doesn’t get his desire and Maguire cannot find the playing form of his 2020-21 peak, then he needs to find an alternative. 

First of all, why have managers liked Maguire?

The good version of Harry Maguire that captained United in 2020-21 was a hard-tackling, ball-carrying centre-back. 

The above image is Maguire’s smarterscout chart for the 2020-21 season until the point of his ankle injury. It is the best illustration of the things the centre-back is good at when playing regularly in a high-performing team.

A few things to note:

• Maguire’s high score for defending impact. That’s the chart telling you Maguire is effective in creating a positive end result when defending. Across his one-v-one duels for United that season, Maguire won more tackles than he lost and prevented more opposition chances than he caused. 
• His competent score for disrupting opposition moves and defending intensity. Maguire is a centre-back who prefers to mark the man, but he has some appreciation of how to properly mark the space around him as well.  
• The high scores for carry & dribble volume plus xG from ball progression tell us Maguire is comfortable carrying the ball out of defence and uses it well. In a United side that often lacked a precise passer in central midfield, it often fell to him to get the ball from the edge of his penalty area to the halfway line. 

The United of 2020-21 defended in a middle block, where the back four typically stationed themselves between the halfway line and their own penalty area. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side did not often use a talented defensive midfielder to manage the space and stop potential attacks, so it often fell to Maguire to run out of his defensive line and make tackles high up the field in order to thwart the opposition.