I wouldn’t mix certain things.
Overall ability on the ball, Virgil is clearly above all of the mentioned. He’s a pretty complete player overall, surpasses even the fact taken into account that he’s a defender.
Slot just spoke about it a few days ago, how he was immediately surprised in training just how good he is in possession. Especially his ability to delay or change his decision, camouflage his move, direction, etc. Until the very final moment of the ball leaving his foot. It buys time and creates space. It connects us to the CB on which sides topic a few days ago, Virgil at LCB enables us to have our best defender with more passing lanes available to him.
Then, more specifically in different aspects, different players have different skills.
Gomez’s pure ball manipulation is pretty good. He can stop, turn, adjust, create little angles for himself. Can also hit good passes, especially long ones to unmarked players.
Matip was less of a passer of variety (remember his really long passes when he did attempt them, it just didn’t have enough pace, his whole technique was limited in that aspect). But someone very calm, brave and comfortable in bringing the ball out and going on runs (or walks through mines!) through lines. Small steps or long strides, head up, he looked almost always in control of his touches.
Agger was, a bit similar to Virgil, very good at delaying until the final moment. But being a lefty, less complete. I used to love his trademark little trick of pretending that he would pass to his LB, opponent tries to read it and go there, but then he’d pull the ball towards himself, gives a little push forward and just goes inside into created space, breaks a line or leaves a few opponents behind.
I remember Kyrgiakos having a very good long pass towards the left side of the pitch. Greece often played with a target man type of forward on the left side of their attack and I wondered if that was part of the reason why he could hit them accurately, without being generally considered a CB comfortable in possession.
To give one more example from the past, Carragher’s ball manipulation was very, very limited. Couldn’t adjust himself or create angles better than stopping and stepping on the ball. But he was never a bad passer of the ball, as he rightly says (or defends himself, in my opinion objectivelly enough). He wasn’t a top passer either, but it’s the ball manipulation part and his general “safety first” approach (though I’ve seen “worse”) in the context of time that limited it. Even his crossing (when doing a job at RB) when hit first time, coming from a running situation was very good, though not so much when from a more standing position (I thought Glen Johnson was the complete opposite, good at more chipped crosses from a more standing position, but not good when he hit them first time, running onto the ball).
