Manchester United fans probably have mixed feelings about the infamous 'dribbled past' statistic.

The obscure dataset came to relevance last season when Liverpool's Virgil van Dijk solidified his status as the world's best defender by going the entire campaign without being dribbled past.

However, now the statistic has started to play into United hands after it surprisingly emerged that their very own Victor Lindelof has similarly stood tall in the Premier League this season.

But considering it transpired just a week after his terrible mistake against Manchester City, you can understand why plenty of rival supporters took it with a pinch of salt.

For the record, WhoScored defines the stat as: “taking on an opponent and successfully making it past them whilst retaining the ball.”

'Dribbled past' statistic

So, there can be no denying that Lindelof's record across 21 games is pretty impressive, even if he's let down the Red Devils in other areas of his game.

And the statistic returning to prominence got us thinking here at GIVEMESPORT and we decided to play around with the data to see if anymore trends emerge.

That led us to wonder which players have been dribbled past the most in Europe's top five leagues, something we investigated in the Premier League alone back in August.

Fred's terrible record

On that occasion, Ricardo Pereira drew the short straw by way of being dribbled past three times per game - and a Premier League player still comes top when we widened the search this month.

The man in question is Fred. Ouch.

The United midfielder seems to have been improving in his second season, but his average of being dribbled past three times every match sees him finish rock bottom across European football.

Another Premier League player joins him on the podium of shame in the form of Wolverhampton Wanderers' Joao Moutinho (2.9), followed by Juraj Kucka of Parma (2.8).  

And in terms of United, Fred's average is more than double that of Brandon Williams, who is the second worst culprit but on a comparatively paltry 1.4 per match. 

GIVEMESPORT's Kobe Tong says

At the point you're effectively losing three one-on-ones every time you step on to the pitch, you know you need to up your game as a top-level midfielder.

Fred has improved since last season, sure, but playing any worse than 2018/19 would have been virtually impossible.

There's doubting that there's a top player deep inside of him, it just doesn't look like he's cut out for the Premier League and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can only be numb to his mediocrity for so long. 

As long as Fred and Andreas Pereira are manning their midfield, United might as well be announcing: 'ah well, that'll do.'