Southgate on Maguire: Is the England manager right about the disrespect shown to United defender?

For what seems to be the hundredth time in the last year, Manchester United and England defender Harry Maguire found himself under fire from fans following his performance against Scotland in Tuesday night’s European Championships Qualifier. Maguire has become infamous in football circles since his move to Manchester United, with fans globally sharing videos of his mistakes and awkward demeanour, as well as questioning his ability to consistently receive a place in Gareth Southgate’s England team regardless of his performances for his club.

The treatment of Maguire appeared to reach its zenith in Tuesday’s win, at least from the perspective of the England manager. After Maguire was jeered upon taking the pitch, Southgate hit out against fans in his post-match press conference, calling the treatment of the defender “ridiculous” and “a joke”. He defended his continued selection of the Sheffield-born defender, citing his strong performances for England during Southgate’s tenure.

But the question that fans continue to ask, is Harry Maguire good enough to be playing for England and Manchester United? If you were to observe the discourse surrounding the player online the answer is a clear “no.” In fact, by only judging him based on social media posts, one would question whether he deserves to be a professional footballer at all.

Luckily, the way we answer questions at Zone 14 is not through social media posts. So what can we learn from data about Maguire’s performances in recent years?

Unfortunately, football analytics are still in the early stages of learning how to properly assess defensive contributions. While the data may exist in the form of tackles, clearances, and aerial duels, mainstream analysis has a hard time analysing this information. For example, the category of tackles. Is performing more tackles better than fewer? For some defenders, this may be the case. However, others may point to the famous Paolo Maldini quote “if I have to make a tackle, then I have already made a mistake.” So while high tackles may be a sign of a defender getting stuck in, they could also be indicative of many mistakes. Equally, a defender with low tackles may be in the right position more often to avoid making challenges, or could be timid and consciously avoiding contact even when it is the best option.

This is to say, any analysis of a defender using publicly available data will be imperfect. While professional clubs may have advanced metrics for judging defensive performance, the average fan does not.

To circumvent this slightly, we will again be using DAVIES data today from American Soccer Analysis. DAVIES data, as discussed in our article comparing Darwin Nunez and Erling Haaland (here) looks at the performances of a player in comparison to players in the same role and of the same age. It uses Goals Added as a metric, which is a cumulative measure of the goal contribution of a player based on their dribbling, passing, shooting, and defending.

Then, we must decide on the appropriate comparison points for Maguire. While DAVIES inherently compares him to central defenders who are his age, how should we contextualize this DAVIES figure? We could look at all Premier League centre backs, but this would encompass teams that play in very divergent styles. The same issue arises if we choose to compare him to all England centre backs. John Stones, who luckily falls into both groups, is a good example of this. If we were to look at Premier League or English centre backs, Stones would likely be at the top for DAVIES due to Manchester City’s recent domination of the Premier League. Additionally, City’s tactics allow Stones to move into central midfield, thus increasing his goals added contribution through progressive passing and dribbling figures. So let’s keep the comparison simple here, let’s just look at Maguire as compared to his Manchester United teammates over the last few years.

Keep in mind here that a DAVIES of 0 is the average for a player of that age and role.

The first thing that pops out from this graph is that Manchester United have struggled in the centre back department as of late. In 2018-2019, the season before Maguire’s arrival, every single one of United’s centre backs performed below average. A season later, in 2019-2020, Harry Maguire posted an exceptional DAVIES of 4.36. For context, Virgil Van Dijk’s DAVIES in 2018-2019 was a 4.52 and culminated in his being named the Premier League Player of the Year.

While subsequent seasons saw a drop off from Maguire, he was still considered to be the best centre back at the club, far surpassing Victor Lindelof and even Raphael Varane upon his signing.

Last season however, with the arrival of Ten Hag, saw a major fall from grace for Maguire. He posted a truly abysmal -1.72 DAVIES, almost equivalent to the performance of Phil Jones in his last representative season at Manchester United.

It is also important to consider with this graph the impact that playing time has on DAVIES contribution. One of the reasons for Maguire’s imperious 2019-2020 season occurred was due to the fact that he played every single minute for Manchester United in the league that year. Last season he only played in 16 matches, with 8 of his appearances coming from the bench.

So as a next stage, let’s adjust the previous chart to instead look at DAVIES per 90 minutes.

Shockingly, the story becomes even better for Maguire. Not only does he continue to dominate his counterparts in his early seasons at Manchester United, he becomes comparable to Lisandro Martinez in performances last season.

** A technical note here: the reason why Maguire’s total DAVIES can be below 0 while his DAVIES per 90 minutes is above 0 is because DAVIES per 90 is not just calculated by dividing the DAVIES by minutes played. Instead, each of the underlying statistics are looked at in per 90 values and then compared between players of the same role and age. So it isn’t just controlling for Maguire’s minutes played, it’s saying instead what would happen if every centre back his age played the same amount of football, what would their goals added have been? **

From the statistics we have, it appears that Gareth Southgate is right. Maguire’s performances according to the data have been strong for years at Manchester United. While he does appear to have fallen off from his peak, he is still a strong centre back option for the England manager.

The abuse that Maguire receives, therefore, seems to have become truly divorced from his performances on the pitch. Maguire online has become a caricature of himself, treated terribly by his own fans. Its one of the cruellest examples of the power of narratives in the world of football. Once the joke about Maguire’s ability began to take off, it snowballed. It has led to a farce in which Maguire has been stripped of his club captaincy. Opposing fans now cheer when Maguire is introduced for Manchester United, and I truly feel for him.

The compelling tale of how narratives help to form our beliefs can (and has) filled many books, and is a story for another day on this blog. For now, the lesson is twofold. Firstly, Harry Maguire was and still remains to be an above average professional centre back. Secondly, when stories and narratives grip the world of football (“Arsenal always try to walk it in”, “the Germans are ruthlessly efficient,” “Harry Maguire can’t defend”, “___ can’t finish”) it is perhaps worth us all digging a little deeper to find out the truth ourselves. Criticism of Harry Maguire may be justified. But I’m with you Gareth, the vitriol has got to stop.