Phil Thompson has defended Dayot Upamecano after Rio Ferdinand slammed the centre-back's performance in RB Leipzig's 5-0 defeat at Manchester United in mdiweek.
Upamecano has been linked with both United and Liverpool thanks to his displays for the German club, yet he was uncharacteristically poor in their midweek Champions League defeat at Old Trafford.
It led to criticism from Ferdinand on BT Sport, who claimed that Marcus Rashford made the centre-back 'look like a schoolboy'.
But Liverpool legend Thompson believes it would be 'foolish' to write Upamecano off after one performance - and reminded Ferdinand of his infamous speech demanding Man United give Ole Gunnar Solskjaer the managerial job after a Champions League win over PSG almost two years ago.
Thompson said: “I’ve seen he’s been linked with Liverpool as well as Man Utd now, and of course, after their result, you’d be wondering whether it’s the right call.
"Though on saying that, you could say the same thing about Virgil van Dijk if you had only ever seen him play in that game against Aston Villa.
"You have your off days – everyone does. RB Leipzig have had a fantastic start to their season, they didn’t look like that in the second half at Old Trafford, United were all over them.
"Upamecano was all over the place, but so was the entire team. But don’t be fooled. He’s a very good defender and there’ll be a lot of people looking at him because he is making a lot of waves.
"There’s not a lot of quality centre-backs available in Europe at the moment, and I know Rio Ferdinand wasn’t happy with his performance… But I think I remember Rio having one or two bad games himself!
"One or two shockers, it happens to everybody. He’s had a couple of shockers as a pundit, too, we’ve all seen the ‘give it to Ole!’ rant a million times."
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