Keane and Evans CB pairing

macheda14

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Two top class premier league CBs we’ve had on our books in the past. Where would they rank as a pairing in the prem?
 
Top class?
Massive, massive exaggeration on both.
 
Adding to what others have said, it's one thing to be a good player for a team with very little pressure and quite another to perform for a club that brings enormous pressure and where every player's performance is scrutinised in great detail.
 
was thinking this when watching the Everton game tonight. They may not be world class, but would’ve been better options than signing Lindelof, Bailly, Rojo and Blind. Could arguably add Smalling and Jones to that list.
 
Top class my arse. They're solid, nothing more. Perfect for clubs with lower expectations. Evans crumbled massively under pressure here, Keane would most likely have done the same.
 
They both have their strengths — Keane is very impressive in the air, and Evans for the most part is solid on the ball, but they’re both prone to errors and in general just lack that general bit of quality to be top level CBs.

Evans is 33 now too. Not sure how much longer he has as a starter in the PL this high up the table.
 
They're playing at the level they should be and doing well too. Doesn't mean they're top class
 
I like Evans but he's been poor every time I've watched Leicester play over the last 12 months. Admittedly that's only been 4 or 5 games so there's a chance I've just happened to watch his bad games.

I've seen even less of Keane but he hasn't stood out (either positively or negatively) the couple of times I have watched him.
 
Keane won't be much better Maguire in a high line defence.
 
Walrus said:
was thinking this when watching the Everton game tonight. They may not be world class, but would’ve been better options than signing Lindelof, Bailly, Rojo and Blind. Could arguably add Smalling and Jones to that list.
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No, just no. Maybe make a case for them being better than rojo and Jones (although Jones clearly had more potential than both if not for injuries), but the rest are/were better players for us. Playing for utd week in week out is alot different
 
Selling them for a combined £5m or whatever token money and then spunking north of £150m on Lindelof, Bailly, Rojo and Maguire is terrible business.
 
They might not be top class but if we had just kept these two instead of buying Rojo, Blind, Lindelof and Bailly would we be any worse off? For me they are better players than all of them and we'd have saved millions in transfer fees.

Van Gaal ruined us with his transfers in that spell. He sold these to play McNair and Blackett. He came from managing the Dutch national team and not a bit of interest in Van Dijk who moved to Southampton that Summer for £13m while we bought Rojo for £16m + a useful Nani on loan. Can only laugh at how wrong he got it really.
 
Samid said:
Top class my arse. They're solid, nothing more. Perfect for clubs with lower expectations. Evans crumbled massively under pressure here, Keane would most likely have done the same.
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Crumbled under pressure? He played a key part from 2011-13 when Vidic was often injured as we won the league and lost another on goal difference in the last second of the league. His last season he made a few mistakes but overall he was a league-winning standard centre back for those two years, which you can’t say about many centre backs that have played for us since.
 
Neither are anywhere close to be going enough, Keane has actually be shite for the most part for Everton and Evans has definitely been shite for the last year for Leicester. Evans was alright at West Brom though in fairness
 
They’re both a credit to the academy but for different reasons had to move on for the sake of their careers. Quoting their combined transfer fee of £5m misses an important point - United have literally hundreds of players through the academy who have gone on to carve great careers out at levels below United. The fact United do their best to accommodate this is a big reason we remain such an attractive club for these young players.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
They’re both very good central defenders. Which is not how you’d describe the vast majority of our central defenders since they left. So yes, we definitely dropped a bollock getting rid of them.
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If we’d been banned from signing CBs for the last 11 years and had had to rely ever since on players already on our books in February 2010 we would currently be choosing from Smalling, Evans, Keane, and Tuanzebe.

Makes you think.
 
He tailed off at the end of the season, but I thought Evans was one of the best centre-halves in the league in 2019/20.
 
Neither are good enough still. Evans was good alongside top class centre halves in Rio and Vidic but was nowhere near when he had to play with others.

Keane is a decent defender but isn’t a good enough footballer. Didn’t anyone watch him against us the other day? Shit himself on the ball constantly, passing it back to the keeper even when he had plenty of time and space. Would get found out here quite easily.

Both would have been very solid as 3rd/4th choice here though.
 
macheda14 said:
I mean playing for two ostensibly top 4/6 level teams is top class. Not world class.
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Never use the wording ‘..... class’ here. Noone agrees on what it means, and hordes think that their definition is obviously shared by all.

I quite like Johnny Evans, he’s made a very good carreer for himself. He was very promising and even good as a 20-year old under Fergie, but his confidence took a beating from the chaos of switching to Moyes and then Van Gaal in his early twenties. If Januzaj missed the love from Louis, I think Evans must have felt like the unwanted stepson of a 16th century king.

Similar attributes to Victor, but Victor is quicker and a bit braver in terms of daring to work on his own weaknesses.

Keane I’ve not seen enough of.
 
We would not have shipped 150 goals this season with Keane and Evans. We have one CB who might be better than these two. We sold both cheap and brought in worse players.
 
Evans is better than Lindelof but struggled against big brutes in his time here too. Went through big losses of form and struggled with confidence as well. Better on the ball than Lindelof too.

Keane has went through spells at Everton where he's been praised but also times where the fans want the club to sell him. Godfrey is the one too watch, he's brilliant.
 
Top class is a bit much

Evans was a very good CB for awhile for us. But not quite top class. Keane is far from that
 
Van Gaal :cool:

Sell the good players sign shite to replace them. Worse than Moyes in my eyes

People are underrating Evans here, he's 33 now and slowing down, but he was a top CB for many years, including for us. Rarely looked out of place.
 
Van Gaal's poor squad management speaks for itself and it set us back 5 years.

Anyone who wasn't an emerging teenager or a world class player in their prime had their confidence and careers destroyed by that man.
 
They’re both probably better than Lindelof and would improve us, Smalling as well.
 
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