Five years on from being told he could become Manchester United’s best ever player by Sir Alex Ferguson, Phil Jones’ career has reached something of a crossroads as he celebrates his 26th birthday today.
“You saw Jones tonight. Arguably, the way he is looking, he could be our best ever player.”
The victim of Jose Mourinho’s latest dressing room tirade and not necessarily part of the Red Devils’ starting XI when everybody is fit, Jones has failed to escape the almighty shadows of predecessors Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand to become the best current centre-back at Old Trafford, let alone the club’s greatest player of all time.
Serious injuries, the turbulence of the post-Ferguson era and the sheer vastness of United’s first team squad have all been influential factors in Jones still waiting to fulfil the potential he showed when Ferguson brought him to the club after a scintillating start to senior football with Blackburn Rovers. But there is something more intrinsic and systematic at work than simply the kind of stumbling blocks many young players face at Europe’s biggest clubs.
For a centre-back about to enter his peak years, there is something worrying old-fashioned about Jones. Liverpool’s £75million swoop for a ball-playing centre-half in Virgil van Dijk shows the direction the trade is going, which Jones has only moved further away from with age. Some managers would argue the merits of a traditional defender who actually understands the art of defending, yet there are no centre-backs these days considered to be world-class who can’t distribute effectively and offer their teams something significant in possession.
And considering how Jones’ career started, his gravitation towards something closer resembling Martin Keown than Ferdinand is perplexing and bemusing. After all, Jones’ first outings for Blackburn Rovers were as a holding midfielder, and right-back was a far more frequent position than centre-half during the early stages of his Old Trafford career as well. Those positions – which Jones has made 61 appearances in for United in total – implore ability in possession, whether it’s natural or gained over time.
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But at the age of 26, it’s hard to remember any instance where Jones has shown real quality, ingenuity or purpose on the ball. His passes are either sideways, a few yards long into midfield or clearing hoofs that inadvertently find United’s centre-forward from time to time. Even this season, which has seen Jones make his most Premier League appearances since 2014/15, the 6 foot 1 defender has created just one chance, taken just two shots at goal and completed a mere seven dribbles.
Of course, those aren’t the statistics we usually judge centre-backs on but compare those returns to Jan Vertonghen’s for example – a defender who strikes a perfect balance between old-school ruggedness and modern-day ball-playing. In the Premier League this term, he’s created twelve chances, taken 15 shots and completed 20 dribbles in just six more games than the England international.
Perhaps Jones was never a great technician like Vertonghen, a product of Ajax’s famous academy, and was only ever played at right-back and in defensive midfield because his inexperience would be less costly there. Perhaps Jones was once far more effective in possession, but as we have seen countless times before, injuries have impacted the kind of player he is.
And yet, there is sometimes a curious fallacy with ball-playing centre-halves that Leicester City’s Harry Maguire unequivocally proves; it’s as much a question of mindset and self-belief as it is actual ability on the ball. That might seem a strange declaration considering the praise Maguire’s received this season, but the naked eye tells you he’s not a graceful footballer like Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos or even John Stones, and the statistics show how inconsistent he is when looking to drive from the back.
His passing accuracy is just 79%, he’s suffered more than twice the number of unsuccessful touches per match than Jones, he’s failed to complete 17% of his dribbles and he’s been dispossessed twelve times in 27 games. For a key figure in the last line of defence, those are incredibly dangerous returns, but nonetheless ones that highlight Maguires willingness to make a difference on the ball even if he’s not the world’s most technically gifted centre-half.
For whatever reason, that’s something Jones has only further shied away from throughout his career and is now being even greater amplified by Mourinho’s pragmatic mantra. Regardless of which side of the philosophical debate you sit on though, whether you think centre-halves should play out of the back or concentrate on keeping clean sheets, there is a curious irony here, as Jones and Maguire’s careers look set to cross paths.
Not only is the latter one of the former’s key and most in-form competitors for a place in England’s starting XI at the World Cup, but Maguire could also end up replacing Jones at Old Trafford – or end up rivalling him with champions-in-waiting Manchester City – if recent reports from The Daily Mail valuing the Foxes star at £50million, a price few would pay for Jones these days, are to be believed.
That’s rather incredible considering where both players were five years ago; while Fergie was tipping Jones to become United’s greatest ever player, Maguire was fighting for promotion from League One with Sheffield United.
But that is why Jones remains such a frustrating story of unfulfilled potential – a refusal to embrace the direction football has moved in over the last decade. Whereas Maguire stands out as a defender of modern mindset, Jones continually appears as something belonging to the recent past.
Accordingly, as one player looks set to move up a few rungs in the English game, both at domestic and international terms, the other – once tipped for such incredible greatness – appears on the verge of inevitably slipping down.
Both physical, cumbersome and English defenders of similar age, however, the only real difference between Jones and Maguire is the mentality and optimism they have on the ball.
