Dreadful performance from most, so many lazy efforts. Smalling summed up the problem with him imo, when he's playing regularly and has good players around him he can be a tank like he was for lvg, but he will never be top level. Today he arguably had a hand in every goal. First one was more blinds fault but you have to cover that as a unit, there's only one player there. Second one he's got his hands up in the air while his man is goal side scoring and he's ball watching. Third he is too slow to cover the gap then gets his body position wrong, ending up dangling his right leg to block a shot to the opposite side. Fourth one is just a shambles all round and he gets walked past by Kante of all people. Some of these errors are bigger than others but top players don't make 4 of these mistakes in a game. He certainly wasn't the only one and I don't want to scapegoat him, this is more a discussion of where he's going now. At least he will never be as bad as rojo. Performance further up wasnt even that bad but we gifted them this game today and smalling was a big part of it. Do we need a partner for bailly? Jose maybe thinks so if we believe he was after fonte in the summer. At least he will get a run with blind now bailly is injured so hopefully he can concentrate like last season and become the beast again because he has it in him.

TL;DR - smalling will never be top level, do we need an upgrade?

Edit: Yes he was great last year in a super defensive team as I already mentioned twice. My question was IS HE TOP LEVEL ie. is he as good as Vidic, Rio, Stam. Clearly the answer from the 4 posters so far is yes.