The F-4 was not a great fighter plane. It was a good fighter-attack aircraft and a good interceptor.
That said, it would have had a much better record as a fighter, if the AIM-7 Sparrow missile wasn’t such a POS during the Vietnam war. The failings of that missile made most encounters a knife fight, where the MiG 17s and 19s were allowed to maximize their strengths.
PLS do not omit the idiotic decision to get rid of the internal gun.
Those Sparrows were a POS. The birds we launched were usually without long range A-A capability because the avionics guys could not get the Sparrows and radar to align. Bombs had to be dropped anyway, and we knew the Sidewinders would work.