Are Bruno and Rashford a problem?

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They were both superb yesterday..

Technically, not the best at times but their sheer effort, passion was everything you needed in a game like that.
 
They both played well yesterday.

Rashford's late miss was nearly fatal whereas Bruno was frequently light in possession, but, on the whole, both played well.

Desperate news Greenwood is quite possibly returning, mind.
 
MancunianAngels said:
They were both superb yesterday..

Technically, not the best at times but their sheer effort, passion was everything you needed in a game like that.
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Can’t say they were superb. The effort was definitely there but the application most of the time wasn’t. Thing with Bruno is you can never fault his commitment and work rate.
 
Freak said:
Can’t say they were superb. The effort was definitely there but the application most of the time wasn’t. Thing with Bruno is you can never fault his commitment and work rate.
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You definitely can, they both played very well.
 
Reading through the last couple of pages in this thread, it's hard to believe we created 28 chances, our team fought for 120+ minutes we beat fecking Liverpool and that this is a Manchester United fan forum.
Great match from both despite doing some mistakes (which you're bound to do in intense matches like this). This is not the match to criticize any of them.
 
The question every United fan should be asking when it comes to Bruno and Marcus is this:

Forget sentiment, forget emotion, forget the odd good performances or good stretches of seasons here and there.

Do you think United will ever re-emerge as title and Champions League contenders with these two as our main men?

For me, no. They're not consistent enough, not mentally strong enough and, let's face it, not good enough.

Good players, don't get me wrong. But we either want to get back to the very top or we don't. We're just f**king around wasting time waiting for these two to bring us to the promised land. Better off selling both in the summer and starting off with a clean slate.
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
The question every United fan should be asking when it comes to Bruno and Marcus is this:

Forget sentiment, forget emotion, forget the odd good performances or good stretches of seasons here and there.

Do you think United will ever re-emerge as title and Champions League contenders with these two as our main men?

For me, no. They're not consistent enough, not mentally strong enough and, let's face it, not good enough.

Good players, don't get me wrong. But we either want to get back to the very top or we don't. We're just f**king around wasting time waiting for these two to bring us to the promised land. Better off selling both in the summer and starting off with a clean slate.
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I think Marcus and Bruno are Arsenal's Aubameyang and Ozil to us - they are all the best players "on paper and best assist/goal providers for years , but at the same time hinder the way the teams can play. If Arsenal stuck with these players for sentimentalism ("LOOK WHAT THEY HAVE DONE FOR US!") they will still be fighting for top 4 today. You need to be ruthless in the football world.

If we sell Marcus and Bruno at, say, 160M combined, and splash 160M on Musiala and 90M on Kvaratskhelia we will be a much better attacking team.

A team like this would be darn exciting for years to come:
Kvaratskhelia (23) - Hojlund (21) - Garnacho (19)
Musiala (21)
Mainoo (19) - [new DF]
 
Rashford and Bruno are as low as you can get on our list of problems. The way I see it is that we’ve got 7 unsellable players - Dalot, Lisandro, Mainoo, Bruno, Garnacho, Rashford and Højlund. We have to build around these players. You don’t get rid of world class players/players with world class quality if you want to build a title winning team, especially Bruno and Rashford who have been showing their quality the longest.

While I’m at it, Ten Hag has to stop this high press-low block nonsense as well, because that’s not helping anyone in our team with the amount of running they have to do. It’s no wonder some of them are knackered and can’t run back, and are injured so often.
 
MalaysianRed7 said:
Rashford and Bruno are as low as you can get on our list of problems. The way I see it is that we’ve got 7 unsellable players - Dalot, Lisandro, Mainoo, Bruno, Garnacho, Rashford and Højlund. We have to build around these players. You don’t get rid of world class players/players with world class quality if you want to build a title winning team, especially Bruno and Rashford who have been showing their quality the longest.
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Who says they're "world class"? Who's made that judgement? They've won very little in their careers and have never even come close to challenging for a title.

That's the problem, it's Emperor's New Clothes when it comes to Bruno and Marcus. We're working on the premise that they're "world class" but not enough United fans have taken off the blinkers and asked, wait a minute, are these guys really world class?

And the reason it's Marcus and Bruno being singled out is because they're the "main men". Our talismen. The players that are never (or hardly ever!) dropped or subbed.

These are the players teams build titles on the back off. If your main men aren't good enough, forget about titles.
 
At the very least we should be signing players in their position with the intention of replacing or phasing them out. The stronger scenario is recognizing, both have given their best years to us already and it's time to cash in while their value is still somewhat high.

They are meant to be our star players but they clearly aren't good enough for that role.
 
MalaysianRed7 said:
Rashford and Bruno are as low as you can get on our list of problems. The way I see it is that we’ve got 7 unsellable players - Dalot, Lisandro, Mainoo, Bruno, Garnacho, Rashford and Højlund. We have to build around these players. You don’t get rid of world class players/players with world class quality if you want to build a title winning team, especially Bruno and Rashford who have been showing their quality the longest.

While I’m at it, Ten Hag has to stop this high press-low block nonsense as well, because that’s not helping anyone in our team with the amount of running they have to do. It’s no wonder some of them are knackered and can’t run back, and are injured so often.
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If our new structure and brains consider Rashford and Bruno as world class players or even players with world class ability and deem them irreplaceable like you seem to then we can forget about the title or even genuine title challenge till they are gone as well because they lack competence to assess what's gone wrong at United and what's needed to set it right .
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
The question every United fan should be asking when it comes to Bruno and Marcus is this:

Forget sentiment, forget emotion, forget the odd good performances or good stretches of seasons here and there.

Do you think United will ever re-emerge as title and Champions League contenders with these two as our main men?
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If you put Rashford and Bruno into that Man City side, they would still win the title. I think Rashford is better than Grealish and imagine the amount of goals that Haaland would get with Bruno feeding him chances.

Bruno makes a similar number of clear cut chances over a season as de Bruyne, admittedly only because of that injury record - but you can't just discount it - Bruno is always fit.

Our problems are elsewhere, we've had big problems at centre half, in my opinion we have huge problems at full back, we had big problems at 6 (although maybe Mainoo will solve that in the long term, it's still hard to say), but also at 7 and 9. Now I believe that with a full season under their belt now, Garnacho and Hojlund can and hopefully will kick on, but we're simply too porous to ever win a league. We give away an insane number of shots. Maybe that's the coaching or maybe that's the players, time will tell, but it's not really good enough.

One thing people forget is that Bruno and Rashford were good enough to win a league once already. It was other areas that let us down.
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
The question every United fan should be asking when it comes to Bruno and Marcus is this:

Forget sentiment, forget emotion, forget the odd good performances or good stretches of seasons here and there.

Do you think United will ever re-emerge as title and Champions League contenders with these two as our main men?

For me, no. They're not consistent enough, not mentally strong enough and, let's face it, not good enough.

Good players, don't get me wrong. But we either want to get back to the very top or we don't. We're just f**king around wasting time waiting for these two to bring us to the promised land. Better off selling both in the summer and starting off with a clean slate.
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Great post
 
Freak said:
Can’t say they were superb. The effort was definitely there but the application most of the time wasn’t. Thing with Bruno is you can never fault his commitment and work rate.
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Fernandes was playing centre back for half an hour. Who else is doing that for us?

Any resemblance of "normal" application disappeared at that point. Rashford was everywhere and recovered well from his miss.

They're both obviously not in the top tier of players but in a game like that, with the season on the line, I was glad they were playing. Long term, who knows what the future holds. In the short term, they are needed.

gajender said:
If our new structure and brains consider Rashford and Bruno as world class players or even players with world class ability and deem them irreplaceable like you seem to then we can forget about the title or even genuine title challenge till they are gone as well because they lack competence to assess what's gone wrong at United and what's needed to set it right .
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We are probably 2 years away from being at that level anyway even if everything goes according to plan. The back 4 needs sorting first this summer (Dalot aside) and we need to strengthen in the midfield (a long term replacement for Casemiro). Top players in those positions improve us straight away.

Until the wider structure is sorted, any new player in Bruno's or Rashford's position/role would probably suffer some of the similar issues. Replacements would also cost more than what we'd bring in.

You may aswell keep them in until the those wider problems are solved. You never know, a proper structure might allow them to really thrive.
 
MancunianAngels said:
Fernandes was playing centre back for half an hour. Who else is doing that for us?

Any resemblance of "normal" application disappeared at that point. Rashford was everywhere and recovered well from his miss.

They're both obviously not in the top tier of players but in a game like that, with the season on the line, I was glad they were playing. Long term, who knows what the future holds. In the short term, they are needed.



We are probably 2 years away from being at that level anyway even if everything goes according to plan. The back 4 needs sorting first this summer (Dalot aside) and we need to strengthen in the midfield (a long term replacement for Casemiro). Top players in those positions improve us straight away.

Until the wider structure is sorted, any new player in Bruno's or Rashford's position/role would probably suffer some of the similar issues. Replacements would also cost more than what we'd bring in.

You may aswell keep them in until the those wider problems are solved. You never know, a proper structure might allow them to really thrive.
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We have small window to actually recoup anything substantial for these two I would rather bite the bullet next summer and sell them to commit to different direction all together even if it leads to short term pain .
 
Bruno and Marcus are match winners, by their own efforts they can win you games on their own.
However as part of any team construct there are problems, their individual styles don't fit into a fixed pattern of play.
Bruno tends to make up for any deficiencies in his impact, by giving 110%; getting about the pitch, at times plugging holes (which ironically sometimes are created by his own style of play) and rescuing his team mates who find themselves in trouble, this is the better part of his captaincy role.

Marcus can influence with one devastating run at defenders, or one brilliant goal, the mood; but when he is not firing on all cylinders, he can depress the mood, his body language can be terrible in these situations.

Until ETH can find another 9 players who can operate efficiently and effectively, with or without Bruno or Marcus, then the die is cast, they both stay.
 
Bruno and Rashford are not the problem, they are just not the solution. I'm not sure we win anything of significance if they are our best players.
 
As ever, the answer probably lies in the middle of the two extreme views. They aren't world class players by any means (which is ideally what you want to go for multiple trophies per season), and the standards of both have been way off their top level this season.

That said, they are still two of our more talented players who are likely to cause problems and create or score important goals for us.

They are not players who I think are keeping others out of the team who are better, nor do I think it would be easy to replace them with someone genuinely better than their top level for the money we'd get for them.

There's far bigger problems in our starting left back who can't really stay fit, centre backs that are often out due to injury or lack the pace to play in a dynamic set up, no real alternative to Hojlund and a midfield made of players that I think are decent as individuals but most either don't have either the ability or the physical attributes to do well in the system Ten Hag seems to want to use (you'd need the engine to cover a lot of ground and have great quality on the ball since often so isolated and under pressure in possesion).

So no, as things stand they aren't a problem in the sense that there are a whole raft of other things we'd be better off sorting first.
 
I think we won't win anything major with them. Particularly Rashford, with his lack of work rate. If we could sell him, that would be a huge boost to our finances and FFP numbers.
 
We need upgrades in every position to be able to compete for the League title again and right now these two players should be close to bottom of the list of players that needs to be upgrading first.

To get a squad of 11 starters + rotation options of their quality and above we'd have to spend EUR 1+ billion on the squad we have.
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
The question every United fan should be asking when it comes to Bruno and Marcus is this:

Forget sentiment, forget emotion, forget the odd good performances or good stretches of seasons here and there.

Do you think United will ever re-emerge as title and Champions League contenders with these two as our main men?

For me, no. They're not consistent enough, not mentally strong enough and, let's face it, not good enough.

Good players, don't get me wrong. But we either want to get back to the very top or we don't. We're just f**king around wasting time waiting for these two to bring us to the promised land. Better off selling both in the summer and starting off with a clean slate.
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Whether we have to keep Rashford and Bruno is a different argument but this reasoning is just illogical.

If they are good players but not good enough to lead the team to title then sign better players, relegate them to rotation which makes squad stronger.

First thing to do is trim the squad by selling the poor players and players who are injury prone.
 
They're neither world class nor are they utter tripe. Both players have a high peak, but they aren't consistently at that peak. Bruno seems a little more consistent, whereas Rashford can be truly terrible for a few games and then brilliant for another one.

I don't think the ability of either can be questioned and i accept that under a better side where they were not the players being relied on to lead the team and win matches - these guys would be seen as excellent players. I think they struggle with the pressure. One tries too hard, one hides quite a lot. Both are prone to errors, mood swings and lack of real application.
 
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roonster09 said:
Wherever we have to keep Rashford and Bruno is a different argument but this reasoning is just illogical.

If they are good players but not good enough to lead the team to title then sign better players, relegate them to rotation which makes squad stronger.

First thing to do is trim the squad by selling the poor players and players who are injury prone.
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I agree with this 100%.
 
OK, let's say we sell them. Who can we feasibly replace them with? What left winger is there in world football that can replicate what Rashford does for us, without breaking the bank for Vini, Mbappe or someone of that quality? An option could be Neto, and have him on the right and Garnacho on the left.

Bruno is a harder one to replace, because he's very unique in the sense that he's equal parts frustrating and equal parts mercurial, often within the span of 5 minutes on the pitch. Florian Wirtz or Lucas Paqueta I think could fit the bill, but you're staring down the barrell of the guts of £150m for either + Neto, and we have other glaring holes in the squad that need addressing this summer and next.

The other route the club can take is recruiting guys that may fit the bill in terms of accommodating and complimenting Rashford and Bruno. This is kind of why I didn't understand selling Fred when we ultimately replaced him with Amrabat. Like can anyone honestly say a midfield of Fred and Mainoo doesn't look like it would gel OK on paper? Fred had a great engine too and often covered for Rashford's lack of tracking back on that left side. Fabinho and Henderson often did the same for Salah, who has zero interest in tracking back too, but admittedly has the attacking output to justify it. Rashford doesn't currently.

A midfield of Bruno, Mainoo and McTominay leaves literally Mainoo as the sole player capable of caressing the ball around the pitch and being open as that first receiver. If we had another Fred-like player, but was more technically gifted and looked after the ball, all of a sudden you have 2 CMs who can pick it up from deep and find Bruno in those final third pockets consistently. Surely there's a player capable of doing that and is available for a reasonable fee?

Similarly, we've missed the influence or Martinez and Shaw down the left, who are capable of dovetailing well with Rashford and showed that last season, with Bruno pulling out there and forcing those overloads for us to exploit. So do we need to rip that up, or just get a reliable LB and another CB to partner Martinez who is good on the ball and is comfortable playing a high line and condensing the pitch, so we're not seeing those wide open spaces that expose our lack of tracking runners.

We may not ultimately ever win anything of serious note with these 2, but they'd be a good bit down the pecking order when I'm looking at who needs to be replaced in that squad.
 
They need real serious competition and to be dropped like any other player when they are off it or their head isn’t in the game. Bruno also needs to be rested more, it’s insane that we have been so reliant on one player for our whole creativity even when he looks totally shattered and out of ideas

This is on the owners more than the players.
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
The question every United fan should be asking when it comes to Bruno and Marcus is this:

Forget sentiment, forget emotion, forget the odd good performances or good stretches of seasons here and there.

Do you think United will ever re-emerge as title and Champions League contenders with these two as our main men?

For me, no. They're not consistent enough, not mentally strong enough and, let's face it, not good enough.

Good players, don't get me wrong. But we either want to get back to the very top or we don't. We're just f**king around wasting time waiting for these two to bring us to the promised land. Better off selling both in the summer and starting off with a clean slate.
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So sell your best players because they're not the standard required to be the best players at a club like United, but keep the players that are worse than them?

That's like saying 'I don't think Lisandro Martinez is quite the standard you would expect to be a CB in a champions league winning team, so we should sell him but keep Lindelof'.

I think Rashford and Bruno are way down the pecking order of players that need to be sold. In fact we should be replacing others with world class players and keeping them both to play alongside them.
 
People on this think its football mananger again in real life

Players like lindelof, maguire and Mctominay sancho and greenwood have to go first we need a really good spine behind bruno an engine workhorse player in midfield with Mainoo and a really quick CB to partner Martinez so now would be the time to cash in on Casemiro and Varane sell those others aswell. Then the season after look to bring in players who we can phase out bruno and rashford with or players that compete for those positions decent younger players in 40-50 million bracket we cant afford to keep paying 80 million fees for every player this is where new people in new positions will have to earn their corn. But really rashford and bruno should be the least of our worries greenwood and mctominay will help with FFP sancho, varane and Casemiro will raise plenty of funds aswell. LB must be adressed it is another big priority along with CM and of course we need a backup striker aswell.
 
BelfastRed2021 said:
People on this think its football mananger again in real life

Players like lindelof, maguire and Mctominay sancho and greenwood have to go first we need a really good spine behind bruno an engine workhorse player in midfield with Mainoo and a really quick CB to partner Martinez so now would be the time to cash in on Casemiro and Varane sell those others aswell. Then the season after look to bring in players who we can phase out bruno and rashford with or players that compete for those positions decent younger players in 40-50 million bracket we cant afford to keep paying 80 million fees for every player this is where new people in new positions will have to earn their corn. But really rashford and bruno should be the least of our worries greenwood and mctominay will help with FFP sancho, varane and Casemiro will raise plenty of funds aswell. LB must be adressed it is another big priority along with CM and of course we need a backup striker aswell.
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Good post. Chelsea tried the Football Manager approach and look how that turned out.

Although I wouldn't be against selling Rashford for the right price because we already have Garnacho, I also would be fine with keeping him providing we can raise funds from selling our squad players this summer. He certainly isn't a priority sale.

It is amusing how many posters on here will comment with "sell Bruno this summer" when there are so many gaping holes around him in the team. Sure - let's sell a player who never gets injured, who guarantees double figure goals and assists every season, and who has an insane level of work rate that we criticise other United players for lacking. And let's replace him with another Mason Mount who we can't rely on for contributing with any of the aforementioned attributes that Bruno brings, but hey - at least we'll have more 'control' in games. Or something.
 
eire-red said:
OK, let's say we sell them. Who can we feasibly replace them with?
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Well i can think of one player who plays in Bruno's position, is meant to be excellent at pressing, is reasonably creative and averages around 10 goals per season and we bought him last summer. Now if only he could stay fit and actually play some games to see if he could do that role to a good level.

I've always really liked Bruno and I like his workrate in particular but it's a common criticism that he's just too chaotic positionally and we all know about Rashford's issues with workrate this season. If we had players that suit the demands of the system more but maybe contributed less goals and assists than Rashford and Bruno I wonder if we'd balance it out by players like Hojlund, Garnacho getting even more goals and making up that deficit while benefiting the team shape more?

It's a tricky one but as others have said I just don't see many title challenging players in this squad or of the elite quality required season in season out. If our best players aren't of that quality then that's a pretty big issue.
 
Gabriel Djemba-Bebe said:
Good post. Chelsea tried the Football Manager approach and look how that turned out.

Although I wouldn't be against selling Rashford for the right price because we already have Garnacho, I also would be fine with keeping him providing we can raise funds from selling our squad players this summer. He certainly isn't a priority sale.

It is amusing how many posters on here will comment with "sell Bruno this summer" when there are so many gaping holes around him in the team. Sure - let's sell a player who never gets injured, who guarantees double figure goals and assists every season, and who has an insane level of work rate that we criticise other United players for lacking. And let's replace him with another Mason Mount who we can't rely on for contributing with any of the aforementioned attributes that Bruno brings, but hey - at least we'll have more 'control' in games. Or something.
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Bruno effort and playing even with injuries isn't the problem. But in a 3 man midfield he is absent. He does not track back. He doesn't win many 1:1's and he doesn't score many goals from the classic 10 position despite being there a lot of times. He creates chances but so does Mainoo these days, Garnacho Rashford Dalot and even Onana. The way he just looks as his direct opponents skipped by and started the move that led to LFC 1st goal last sunday was just the drop for me. If the team focus starts to drop, a captain should rally the troops and I rarely see him do that. Onana, Antony even Dalot talk a lot more to other players.

We don't have to sell him but are we expected to park him on the bench? He just made to be captain. You cannot bench a captain.

Evenso, if ETH doesn't see the need to replace him, so be it. For me at his position we need somebody more complete. More scoring too. And is it not better for every squad to have competition on every position? Is Mount going to do that? Ten Hag public talk can sometimes be a bit puzzling, see also with Ronaldo. Ideally I'd love to keep Bruno but he either needs healthy competition for his place, or sold.
 
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Bit bizarre to see players described as world class who have been really bad all season for a team that sits 6th (and 6th flatters us).

Ultimately, elite teams keep possession of the football. Bruno and Rashford are turnover machines who cannot take care of the ball and cannot consistently make good decisions.

Rashford also has the issue that even at his best, his defensive work is atrocious with lack of running, pulling out of tackles, refusing to challenge for headers, pretending to be injured after every challenge while the game continues around him - I cannot imagine Klopp or Pep tolerating his half arsed attitude on the pitch.

We need to build a new team that can actually keep hold of the ball, it won't be a popular opinion but it makes sense to cash in now while their stock is still high, and fund our rebuild.
 
miliebrowndivorceattorney said:
Bruno effort and playing even with injuries isn't the problem. But in a 3 man midfield he is absent. He does not track back. He doesn't win many 1:1's and he doesn't score many goals from the classic 10 position despite being there a lot of times. He creates chances but so does Mainoo these days, Garnacho Rashford Dalot and even Onana. The way he just looks as his direct opponents skipped by and started the move that led to LFC 1st goal last sunday was just the drop for me. If the team focus starts to drop, a captain should rally the troops and I rarely see him do that. Onana, Antony even Dalot talk a lot more to other players.

We don't have to sell him but are we expected to park him on the bench? He just made to be captain. You cannot bench a captain.

Evenso, if ETH doesn't see the need to replace him, so be it. For me at his position we need somebody more complete. More scoring too. And is it not better for every squad to have competition on every position? Is Mount going to do that? Ten Hag public talk can sometimes be a bit puzzling, see also with Ronaldo. Ideally I'd love to keep Bruno but he either needs healthy competition for his place, or sold.
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I'll just leave this here.
 
Dominos said:
Bit bizarre to see players described as world class who have been really bad all season for a team that sits 6th (and 6th flatters us).

Ultimately, elite teams keep possession of the football. Bruno and Rashford are turnover machines who cannot take care of the ball and cannot consistently make good decisions.
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I watched an youtube video KDB rated Bruno higher than Odegaard as Midfielder. He praised Bruno as a creative machine and Odegaard is more of a control type midfielder. I personally don't see issue on taking risk in final third to create chance, but I am not a coach either.
 
I guess thy are a problem in that they are very inconsistent. In terms of ability though, they, in my opinion, are amongst our better players, and more often than not, when they play well, the team does.

Rashford was pretty consistent last season, especially in terms of his goal-scoring, but Bruno has been quite up and down for a while now.

I think for a team to be challenging year in year out, you need your so called best players to be consistent. You see it with players like Haaland, Salah, Rodri, De Bruyme, Van Dijk, etc every season. They set the levels and others follow.

With Bruno and Rashford, along with many of our other players, their form fluctuates way too often. That said, that's when you expect the manager to step in and make the necessary changes if they are not playing well enough.
 
Bruno is creative but my issue with him is that he’s about single passes and can’t seem to link with other players in tight areas very well. When teams make themselves compact against us (which they nearly always do) his only response is to force a long ball. Having a Bernardo Silva of our own would make us much better and get much more out of Mainoo imo.
 
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