Shermans are kmocked too much. They were incredibly easy to fix on a battlefield (15 min to fix a broken tread, one hour to swap out a turret behind the lines. Later up gunned models could hold against anything but Tigers. Their somewhat smaller size made them better in cities.
And the fact we built the average Sherman in 4.5 hour from scratch?
Shermans are knocked WAY too much! The Russians who used them thought they were great, and said the T-34 was MORE likely to catch fire when hit, but you never hear that when people write about the “Ronsons” on the battlefield. The biggest shortcoming of the Sherman was that it was designed to fight against the Panzer III & IV models, and fell behind as development continued. The fact that a destroyer could not take on a battleship didn’t mean the destroyer was a bad design, but everyone seems to think that the Sherman was awful because it was outclassed by the Tiger, which was a heavy tank.
The Panther was not a great design either. The French used some in their army after WWII and found them way too unreliable. I read an account of their experiences online but can’t find it at the moment. A list of the tank’s shortcomings is found here:
http://ww2weaponsforum.com/showthread.php?14514-Post-War-French-Assessment-of-THe-Panther-Tank