I can see why Maguire is such a dividing player among our fanbase/coaches/commentators
On one hand, he is a proactive defender who loves chasing for the ball , which gives him lots of defensive stats (like duels won, tackles, etc), people judging players on stats would think he is good.
On the other hand, apart from his goals-conceding switch offs which happens almost every game, he has many little habits which are not that noticeable but cripples his team, like :
1. habit of playing safe and boot the ball forward randomly when he is under slightest pressure (awb says hello too)
2. over complicating passes when we try to pass out from the back, which slows down our build up play and reduces the number of attacks we make, and the number of chances we can create.
3. he is bad at putting an adequate weight on his passes, which again damages our build up play (even his so called good long cross field passes are always too slow in pace when accurate, when the ball reaches his target, the opponent has already reshaped, so there is no use with the long pass)
4. he loves standing too close to his teammates no matter we are defending or attacking (to cover up his poor pace), so even if we win the ball, all our teammates have one less teammate as an option to pass to, it is like a 10 v 11 and we lose possession more easily.
5. when we have freekicks, he has a poor offside awareness and loves fouling the defending opponents
these little gritty things adding up explains why some fans or professionals like van der vaart, davis, consider him a championship level player