bigmick wrote:god_bless_john_houlding wrote:When Agger arrived, he was disappointing, made one or two errors, but given time he's become the best defender from abroad that this league has seen since Hyypia. I don't think Skrtel is as good as Agger but that's because I think so highly of our danish centre half, I think given the time Skrtel will be good enough for us.
Agger is or was a good player, and was continuing to develop apace. I must confess though I think he has a long way to go to become the best foreign centre half in the League.
With blokes like Gallas, Toure, Vidic, Carvallho around (not saying BTW that Agger is arguably better than a couple of those) and fellas in the past like Stam and players of similar ilk, the Premiership has had some good centre halves along the way.
Agger is probably one of the best ball-playing centre halves of his generation there's no doubting that, the kid really is a smashing footballer. Developement though will come and will need to in his physical presence, his aerial ability etc. If and until that happens, he's always going to need a really top class no-nonsense defender alongside him to be seen at his very best. While probably not being actually the very top class Carragher filled the role ably and they looked like a good pairing when playing together. Worryingly however this hasn't been one of Jamies best seasons, and while I appreciate peoples opinion that it's "too early" to call Skyrtel, there are one or two worrying signs I think that he has that "standby" mode where he switches off and ball watches during games.
On the positive, he does look to have plenty of pace and can play a bit, and he does look like the "no-nonsense" type which Agger needs. Poor decision making though such as the first goal against Man Utd, or allowing Rooney to run off him while he watched a long punt from Van Der Saar fly seventy yards over his head are a concern. It maybe too early to definitively know one way or the other whether he will develop into a top-class centre back, but IMHO at least he is a fair distance short of being one right at this moment.