Stolen from a guy on reddit, but he's on point:
Yes, Harry leaving will be best for both sides, but the reaction is quite funny compared to yesterday. Against Lens, we gave up a goal under less pressure, and everyone's response was playing out from the back is high risk high reward. Sometimes you're going to give one away. It's part of the process. Today, people are defending booing your own players in a friendly.
On the surface, he's not wrong. And it's kind of sad to see the narrative change when the players involved happen to have different numbers on the back of their shirts. The opposition didn't target any of Onana, Varane or Maguire in their press. The trap, on both occasions, was set on the FB and both Dalot and AWB fell for it. There's no player in the last line of defence who wants to receive a square pass in a stationary position with an opposition player running straight at him, Maguire or whoever. Some can deal with it better than others (Licha, for example), but that doesn't make the initial choice of pass any better.
It's frustrating because Shaw, on the other side of the pitch, regularly shows them what to do when they hit a dead-end. If there's room to manoeuvre, use the keeper as a link player to safely switch sides. If you're really stuck on the sideline with no good options, try to either bounce the damn thing off an attacker to win a throw or lob it down the wide channel (and then turn to your teammates and start shouting at them). I'm saying this because we're going to be depending on Dalot/AWB a lot more than on Maguire during the course of the season.
The problem with Harry, in the context of take the hit now to reap the reward later, is that he has no redeeming qualities as a modern day centre-half. And it's not that he's cumbersome and very risk-averse. You can work around these things. His issue that he reacts to everything and he anticipates nothing, and this is probably why he feels so uncomfortable outside his comfort zone. Always late, always concerned about the space behind him and, as a result of these two, always afraid to play a pass through the lines. And i'm sorry to say it, but this is not the manager's problem. It's the player's. Some solutions, you have to find them on your own.
I remember the late Cruyff, when asked about how much he valued speed and technical ability, argued that football is a game played, first and foremost, in the head. The feet can only do what the brain tells them to do. The great Dutchman expanded on that by saying that the first name in every one of his "best xi" teams would be a certain midfielder who wasn't exceptionally gifted technically and he certainly wasn't fast enough to screen the defence. Why? Because he reads the game better than anyone else. That midfielder went on to become one of the best managers of all time.
Anyway, i don't think he'll go to WHU. I believe he was given assurances from Southgate that he will feature for England and he probably wants to wait until the summer with the hope that a good tournament with the NT will make better teams more interested. And truth be told, WHU look to be a mess internally at the moment.
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