Manchester United's Harry Maguire had a game to forget against Leicester City on Saturday afternoon.Routinely booed by a packed King Power Stadium, Maguire was arguably culpable for three of the Foxes' goals in a 4-2 defeat that confined United to three consecutive league games without a win.Maguire was pick-pocketed mere seconds before Youri Tielemans' first-half equaliser, unsoundly marked Jamie Vardy for Leicester's winner and well, we'll get on to the fourth goal in a second...
One game too soon for Maguire?
All in all, it was a disappointing performance from one of the Premier League's finest centre-backs and one that suggests that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's decision to rush him back was a mistake.
Maguire had missed United's last two games with a calf injury and had only just returned to training, which prompted Solskjaer to take the blame for rushing him back during his post-match interviews.
According to the Manchester Evening News, Solskjaer said: "It was my decision to play Harry. He's worked really hard on the rehab with the physios and he looked ready, he didn't feel any after-effects, he trained with us, he looked sharp.
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"He's a big, massive player for us, he's so important, he's the captain, he's the leader, we wanna bring him back as soon as we can because he's been so influential in our play.
"Maybe he needed that first-half to get going but I thought he got better and better throughout the game, more comfortable on the ball, the game was ebbing and flowing."
First and foremost, fair play to Solskjaer for fronting up to any potential culpability and it really goes to show that Maguire was not completely at fault for such a below-par performance.
Worrying footage of Maguire's marking
That being said, it certainly doesn't look as though Maguire covered himself in glory with Leicester's fourth goal, which saw Patson Daka notch his maiden Premier League strike in stoppage time.
That's because footage of just how easily Daka was able to lose Maguire in the box and duly give himself what was essentially an open goal is so painful to watch that it's gone viral on Twitter.
Having racked up more than 3,500 retweets and 15,100 'likes' at the time of writing, you can see what all the fuss is about by watching the moment that Daka evaded Maguire down below:
Oof. That's certainly not a good look for the United skipper.
How did Daka escape him so easily?
It really is cringe-worthy to see just how effortlessly Daka went from being marked very closely by the former Leicester defender to simply slipping behind him and bundling the ball into the net.
It's important to note that the ball took a number of small deflections on the way to finding the back post, which may have thrown off Maguire, but surely he should have stuck tighter to Daka?
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Either way, though, the moral of the story is that United would have been leaving the King Power Stadium without a point regardless of whether Maguire had pinned himself to Daka or not.
There is no denying for one second that the 26-year-old is a top, top defender, but perhaps by no fault of his own, the Leicester game was one match too soon.
