Do take the Tadej Pogačar vs Eddy Merckx argument with a pinch of salt, as a 70s star swings for the Slovenian, again

To earn a nickname like Mr Paris-Roubaix, you need a few things. A supreme athletic talent, of course. But also a steely-eyed belligerence when it comes to defending your ground – and a decided lack of risk averseness.

And Seventies star Roger De Vlaeminck – Mr Paris-Roubaix himself – has once again been displaying plenty of the latter two attributes in his latest interview, this time with Belgium's Het Laatse Nieuws.

This time it is Tadej Pogačar who once again finds himself the target of the 78-year-old Belgian's fiery tongue.

De Vlaeminck called assertions that Pogačar is as good as Merckx "crazy", adding: "Pogacar isn't even close to Merckx's toes! Journalists who dare make that comparison don't know anything about it."

He even suggested that the Slovenian would find it impossible to drop him, too: "Let me be 22 years old today and ride in the peloton with Pogačar, and he won't break away from me. Where was it recently – when he rode away from [Remco] Evenepoel? In Lombardy. Not even on a difficult climb. As good as Merckx... Come on.”

This isn't the first time that modern riders have come under fire from De Vlaeminck's acerbic opinion. After last year's World Championships road race he said: "With me, Merckx or [Freddy] Maertens, Pogačar would never have ridden alone in front for 90 kilometres."

Of course, the comparisons between modern riders and Merckx (who, with 500 victories will always be the touchstone in these sorts of conversations) are great fun and make for hours of pub-argument style entertainment, but they're generally pretty hard to take seriously.

De Vlaeminck's insistence that Pogačar would be utterly incapable of dropping him were he 22 again, doesn't do anything to dispel this.

Rather his arguments sound like the pontifications of an old soldier, fiercely proud of where he comes from and resentful of the hyperbole surrounding today's best riders.

Many point towards Merckx's 500-victory tally as evidence of his superiority (Pogacar is currently on 108). But Pogacar and Merckx represent two entirely different eras, with different training, nutrition and races. They are not comparable by a simple win-tally.

Retiring Canadian rider Mike Woods put forward a well-constructed argument in favour of Pogacar recently, telling Cycling Weekly: "Merckx was competing when there were only four billion people on the planet. And only four countries were good at it… and there were guys he was racing against who were still working."

Woods added: "The fact that Pogačar's as good as he is with this level of depth, with this pool of talent that's being drawn from, it's vastly superior, vastly superior."

The Canadian definitely makes a point. More so than De Vlaeminck, who doesn't seem to at all.

However, like all other Merckx vs [insert modern rider here] arguments, exactly who is 'better' remains unprovable conjecture and always will do. The eras are just way too far apart.

So let's keep on enjoying these little debates while remembering that none of us are demonstrably 'right' – we'd just like to think we are.