I haven't seen a game with him but I've seen some highlights of games and he got burned on them and he was also injured so I was wondering if he has helped.
Helped? Yes. Is he the Defensive Messiah that people made him out to be? No. He's still settling in to the team, and to be fair, he is partnered most often with Blanc, who is not the fleetest of foot....
I think Rio has helped, however he'll help much more if partnered with someone other than Blanc. O'shea being a prime suspect, but i think bringing in another top quality defender (Kevin Hofland, Mexes etc..) would do the job. Rio is part one of our big defensive solution, we still need full-backs (That Escude bloke, or one of the best in the world - Cafu who said he'd gladly join Utd when his contract expires)
He's injured now, no word on the length of time he'll be out. Initial guesses (read: useless) are about 2-3 weeks...
Until Saturday Utd had one of the best defences in the Premiership. That certainly wasn't the case twelve months ago. There's a big improvement there. Unfortunately theý still have Blanc partnering Ferdinand and there's little Rio can do about Blanc's woeful lack of pace and laziness in getting back into position. Brown's injury has prevented the pairing of Ferdinand and Brown which I think might have become a much sounder central defence.
So if Sir Alex comes to his senses and benches blanc, and all the defenders were healthy, who would be the central pair. Rio, O'shea, Brown, Silvestre, and Neville. You many consider the last two fullbacks, but I think they could and have held their own in the middle as well. Then again, as people have said above, they are needed on the outside.
I think if all players were available the defence would be G Neville - Brown - Ferdinand - Silvestre though I concede that O'Shea has a reasonable claim in place of Brown. For a centre back pairing to work well, though, the two need to play together and work on producing a good understanding. The injury situation at Old Trafford this season has been atrocious and has prevented any such understanding developing. What's more, this awful injury jinx is now continuing with Rio now out for the next three matches and this morning I hear that Beckham is out for 3-6 matches with a broken rib. With Arsenal, Liverpool and Deportiva coming up it's a crucial period to have so many players out.
i would say no, though for the past month or so i've been pretty disconnected from things thanks to being grounded. all i ever hear about is rio's new injury, or how long rio will be out this time. i havent really heard any positive words about him at all. he's still a solid player, really solid, but i dont think he was worth what we paid for him.