Sir Alex Ferguson didn't get an awful lot wrong during his time at Manchester United but, three-and-half years after he said it, his assertion that Jonny Evans and Chris Smalling would be Old Trafford's central defensive pairing of the future remains distinctly unproven. 'That is how I look upon it,' said Ferguson in an interview with the official Inside United magazine in February 2011. 'I think their time will come.' Had things gone as planned, this indeed would be the era of Evans and Smalling. Both have been at the club for long enough now. This season, for the first time, the path to the first team has been left clear by the departures of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic.
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Sir Alex Ferguson predicted Chris Smalling and Jonny Evans to be Manchester United's future central partnership three-and-a-half years ago
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The pair have failed to live up to their billing at Old Trafford so far
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Smalling and Evans are both injury prone like Phil Jones
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Evans was injured during Premier League 5-3 defeat at Leicester
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Smalling has played 12 consecutive games for United in the last two years
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Michael Carrick may be deployed as a centre back by Louis van Gaal
Neither of the three players will like to hear it, no player does, but @placeholder, Evans and Smalling are all too injury prone.
@placeholder, meanwhile, is 26 and has shown enough, when fit, to suggest that he has the potential at least to be a United player of some stature.