Harry Maguire second in ranking of every Man Utd centre-back post-Sir Alex Ferguson

Barring any medical mishaps, Leny Yoro will soon be a Manchester United player, and Erik ten Hag will be hoping the teenager will turn out to be a damn sight better than the majority of centre-backs to have graced Old Trafford in the 11 years since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club.

We’ve ranked all 14 of them from worst to best, having excluded any who didn’t start a senior game. Apologies to Tom Thorpe and Will Fish.

And we do think Yoro might be a genuine coup; how many of these would fit into that bracket?

14) Di’Shon Bernard
One senior start, in the Europa League against FC Astana in November 2019, in which he scored an own goal to condemn United to a 2-1 defeat. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said he was otherwise “excellent” before sending him back to the Under-23s. Bernard moved to Sheffield Wednesday last summer.

13) Tyler Blackett
Made his senior debut in Louis van Gaal’s first competitive game in charge, playing on the right of Phil Jones and Chris Smalling in a back three as United lost 2-1 at home to Swansea. In spite of that and United only winning three of the 10 games Blackett played that season, Van Gaal was delighted to see the defender handed a new deal, claiming he was “at the right club to continue his development and progression to become a great defender.”

Blackett immediately went on loan to Celtic and then moved permanently to Reading for £1.5m in 2016 having made no further appearances for the Red Devils. He’s just been released by Rotherham.

12) Timothy Fosu-Mensah
Sneaks onto the list with two of his 30 appearances at centre-back. Both wins as it turns out, in successive games in 2016, off the bench against Arsenal and from the start against Watford.

“He always closed the door for us,” said a fawning Louis van Gaal after the Watford win, but also insisted right-back was Fosu-Mensah’s best position. That’s a role the now-26-year-old will have hoped to play at Bayer Leverkusen, but their rise under Xabi Alonso has left the Dutchman in the dust. He played no part in their double-winning campaign last term.

11) Axel Tuanzebe
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had earmarked Tuanzebe to be the future captain of United, which may well say more about the manager than the player, who took a step down to come straight back up, making 18 appearances in Ipswich’s successful Championship campaign, chiefly at right-back.

10) Willy Kambwala
“It may seem crazy, but when my mother made me start playing football, I made her a promise that I would become a professional at Manchester United when I turned 16,” Kambwala said shortly after his senior debut last season. “It’s my childhood club. Ever since very little, I’ve said I’m going to play there.”

Six months later he was told by Erik ten Hag that he would be way down the centre-back pecking order before United accepted an £8.4m offer from Villarreal. A brief dream come true for Kambwala, though the buy-back clause suggests this may not be the end.

9) Paddy McNair
“In midfield, a Number 10, I’ll play wherever – so long as I score two!” said McNair, who revealed he had never played as a centre-back before Louis van Gaal showed up at United. That frustration became the manager’s as Van Gaal claimed McNair “thought he was striker” in some typical public criticism after the Northern Irishman’s apparent instinct for goals cost them in a draw with Leicester.

McNair never did score for United in 27 appearances and has 14 goals in 219 appearances for current club Middlesbrough, playing two-thirds of those games as – you guessed it – a centre-back.

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8) Eric Bailly
The first player signed by Jose Mourinho and £30m was a fair whack for a centre-back eight years ago. Occasionally brilliant, more often unreliable and even more often than that injured. Bailly had 16 separate injury lay-offs at Old Trafford, missing 127 games in six years.

7) Jonny Evans
Returned after an eight-year sabbatical at West Brom and then Leicester, initially just to train in the squad before Ten Hag realised Evans was about as good if not better than the other options available to him. Made more Premier League appearances for United as a 35-year-old than in all but one of the seven seasons of his first spell at the club.

6) Marcos Rojo
Signed for £18m from Sporting Lisbon on the back of his World Cup displays for Argentina in 2014, where he played solely as a left-back, Rojo spent six seasons at Old Trafford, mainly in the middle.

He was in and out of the team for the first three, rotated with Chris Smalling, Eric Bailly, Daley Blind and Phil Jones in quite the golden era, before being an angry cheerleader for Victor Lindelof and Harry Maguire in the second half of his stint at Old Trafford, during which time he suffered more than his fair share of injuries. Short and aggressive like compatriot Lisandro Martinez, just without all that passing through the lines nonsense.

READ MORE: Man Utd have a rich history of post-Euro/World Cup transfer flops…who will be next?

5) Victor Lindelof
Not Good Enough For Manchester United is the party line, but Lindelof – who joined United from Benfica for £28m in 2017 and has a year left on his current deal – has been exactly as good as Manchester United have been in his time at the club.

The arrival of Yoro or others this summer may well see him pushed from the club if they can find a buyer. And we suspect plenty of clubs will be interested in an experienced centre-back who’s proven himself perfectly capable of playing for a club fighting for European qualifcation and domestic cups.

4) Daley Blind
We’re not entirely sure whether he was criminally underrated at Manchester United or just better wherever else he’s played. Probably a bit of both.

He made 141 appearances for United, including every minute in their run to win the FA Cup under Louis van Gaal in 2015/2016, as well as both semi-final legs and the final of the Europa League the following season, which ended in victory over boyhood club Ajax in the final under Jose Mourinho.

Blind returned to Ajax in 2018 citing the “hopelessness under Mourinho” at Old Trafford as one of the key reasons and moved to Girona last summer after a very brief and pointless six months at Bayern Munich, playing a pivotal role in one of La Liga’s greatest ever shocks as the minnows qualified for the Champions League having gone toe-to-toe with Real Madrid and Barcelona for the majority of the campaign.

Can’t help but feel United should have done more to persuade him to stay.

3) Raphael Varane
Considered by many to be quite the coup when he arrived at Old Trafford in 2021 as a World Cup and four-time Champions League-winning centre-back supposedly in his prime at 28 years old. But as has also proven to be the case for fellow Real Madrid arrival Casemiro, every year at United counts as three in the legs, and having performed around his par in his first two seasons, Varane’s form dipped in line with his desire to be a Manchester United player last season, as he became a ringleader of ‘dissent’ with his buddy.

2) Harry Maguire
United again want rid of him, but like last summer when he rejected the advances of West Ham, Maguire wants to stay and fight for his place. We all scoffed at his decision a year ago and the majority will be raising eyebrows once again, but the Red Devils would have been in real trouble without him last term and there is obvious worth in having someone around who gets up no matter how much he gets battered – often by his own fanbase – to perform admirably for the club.

For the 427th time, it’s not Maguire’s fault he cost £80m.

1) Lisandro Martinez
Pretty quickly made Jamie Carragher look very daft in his debut season after the pundit claimed his height would hold him back in the Premier League, consistently illustrating how his positioning and tenacity rendered his physical limitations superfluous.

Really terrible at the start of last season before injury kept him out of the majority of the campaign, but will return to the club having won his second international gong after Argentina conceded just one goal with him at centre-back on their way to Copa America glory.