There seemed to be a notion behind Harry Maguire’s £90 million transfer to Manchester United just four years ago that if the club just spent enough on the right kind of player then United might end up with their own version of Virgil van Dijk.
Liverpool’s Dutchman was, at that moment, the pinnacle of defensive excellence. A man with an option for every situation. He could pass the ball. He could score goals. And all of that came on top of all the usual good centre-half attributes of strength, pace and a remarkable record over that season of 2018-2019 that not one opponent was successful in dribbling past him. He was the PFA player of the year and he gave others the idea: you could have it all in one player. A Swiss Army knife of a centre-half, who did not need anyone to shield his weaknesses.
Maguire arrived at United with that expectation forming. Yet he was never that kind of defender. He was not even that at Leicester where Jonny Evans was arguably the senior man in the central defensive partnership – when he played – and Ricardo Pereira, the right-back, was the club’s player of the season. Maguire had some good strengths, one of which was his endurance to play large quantities of games. He was oddly nimble on the ball for a defender of such conventional physique.
Yet there were also great gaps in his game, and these were steadily exposed in the often chaotic United of his four years that has seen him play under four managers on a journey from virtually ever-present in his first season, to accident-prone, to benched captain. A bleak line of travel. Van Dijk remains one of the best defenders in the Premier League – but even he has not been able to keep pace with the performances he set in his first two Liverpool years.
At West Ham, Maguire would have a more orthodox set of expectations upon him. There will be no escaping the baggage of the past, although those experiences also confer a certain wisdom. West Ham is a club at which a deeper defensive line is often the accepted approach and defeat is, to put it bluntly, not always a shock. It feels like the kind of place a 30-year-old centre-back might find some redemption. Win over the fans with some decent performances. Establish himself as a relatable figure, once knocked over but now back on his feet. Doing it for West Ham – whatever that is in 2023-2024. There is a value in that too.
Maguire has spent what should have been his best years at United. Sometimes the timing is wrong. They were four wild years in the life of the club and still, for all Erik ten Hag’s influence, that volatility continues. Yet even so there feels no prospect of Maguire returning to the first team on a permanent basis. It is hard to walk away from Manchester United, especially when an argument can be made that events have conspired against him. The escape route offered by West Ham is no shame.
He played his career at underdog clubs: Sheffield United, Hull City, even Leicester – and then it turned out Manchester United were one too, among the elite of the English game, in the time he was there. At 30, with the trust of Gareth Southgate hanging by a thread over his place with England, the moment has come to grasp a chance to start anew somewhere else. It will feel like a relief.
Had he gone to Manchester City, who refused to meet the valuation of Leicester in the summer of 2019, might it have been different? Maguire would have benefited from a much more stable team but City have also been ruthless with those who have not met their standards. Pep Guardiola switches his defenders. He asks very different roles of John Stones, Maguire’s England defensive partner, in particular. Maguire might also have found himself lower in the pecking order from the start. Stones is currently the best centre-back in the league. Even he does not play every game for City.
Did City ever intend to push for Maguire in the summer of 2019? They never did sign a centre-half that summer when Vincent Kompany left. Ruben Dias, who arrived in 2020, is a right-footed left-sided complementary partner to Stones.
Last season’s treble-winning City back four often featured four centre-halves with Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji co-opted into full-back positions. That is the prototype currently for the title-winning defensive line-up – a flexible evolving back line in which different jobs are asked of different players. Maguire came to United when it seemed what they wanted was someone to rescue them defensively, and gradually, by virtue of the price paid, and the mood of the time, much of that fell on his shoulders.
He certainly will have a compelling story to tell about his career when it is over, and it is far from over yet. Not quite what he expected or hoped for when it came to United. In his determination to hang on through the hardest parts, the intention and the spirit was admirable. Now there is a new opportunity – not as glamorous as the one offered four years ago but valuable nonetheless. This is how it goes sometimes. At the very least, the expectation, should he take the leap, will be much more reasonable.
