"He runs off the ball, he's willing to make runs and take players away. He's a team player, he plays for the team, he's not selfish."
It is slightly ironic that such a description of Jesse Lingard - undoubtedly true of the Manchester United loanee - belies the very reason why he is thriving right now.
It was time for Lingard to put himself first when choosing to leave United on loan for West Ham in January.
After turning 28 in December, the England international had an epiphany. He needed to play regularly and rediscover his love for football. Having been affected by some personal family issues, and without a regular place in the United team, Lingard's relationship with the game and with his boyhood club had become distant.
He hadn't played a single minute in the league for United by the time he agreed to join David Moyes at West Ham.
Now he's played seven games and scored five goals, thrusting himself rapidly back into the England squad and prompting the kind of praise (above) from the same pundits who had been slating him six months ago.
"He's not worried about himself," continued Paul Merson with his assessment of Lingard's red-hot form. "He's worried about the team. Sometimes when it's not going well everybody jumps on, 'he's not scored for that long or he hasn't set up.'
"It might not be that pass that sets up the goal, but he will be involved and that's why I think he's a good player."
It was never truly in doubt that Lingard is a more than capable footballer. His starring role in England's sensational run to the 2018 World Cup semi-finals had already proved that, not to mention more than 100 Premier League appearances for United - scoring some vital goals.
And it's interesting that many United fans' opinions of Lingard have done a complete 360 degree turn in the space of a year or two. From the collective joy of watching Lingard terrorise Arsenal in the winter of 2018/19, to the despair of his disastrous 2019/20 campaign - saved only by a goal on the season's final day against Leicester - to the hindsight-driven 'told you so's that are now back on the agenda.
Many supporters watched Donny van de Beek labour for United in the FA Cup against Leicester on Sunday and longed for Lingard to return. And of course the current form of the two players is chalk and cheese. Maybe Lingard would be the more able alternative to Bruno Fernandes, maybe he could be playing a big part as a squad player for United, given their current injury situation.
But to suggest Lingard would have hit the same vein of form had he remained at Old Trafford is to live in a parallel universe, blinkered.
Lingard quite clearly needed the change of scenery in order to find himself again.
His West Ham boss Moyes recently lauded Lingard for taking a "brave" decision to leave the safety blanket of United behind.
"I've got to say we are incredibly thrilled for Jesse," Moyes said. "You have to say, Jesse has taken a big chance leaving Manchester United, but more importantly he's gone and said: 'I'll show that I can do it somewhere else'.
"That takes bravery that you can go, stand up and show exactly what you're about and what your quality is."
And that's exactly where the Lingard hindsight brigade are going wrong, and are actually doing a disservice to the player.
You cannot say for certain how he would have fared, if he'd stayed at United. It was so blatantly clear he needed a new club and a change of emphasis, maybe even location, to click back into gear.
The credit for that ought to be Lingard's, and only his.