If we play Antony instead of Bruno against City do you think it makes a difference?
Yes, it makes a difference. But no, not enough to have impacted the result. There are two different things. It’s not about switching Bruno for another player to win a game of football. It is about building a team capable of winning trophies, and for us to have a chance at that - we need to change how we play football. We also need to improve the quality of our players, but we cannot win big prizes until we improve our organisation and possession. Both of those things are directly contradictory to Bruno, and as a result, the first step to building such a team would be, in my opinion, to remove the contradictory centre piece that only plays the opposite way.
So Antony as a 10 would be a step closer to allowing us to play the right way. So would Adam Lallana. But we would still have a quality issue. If the team was already a top team drilled in playing what I consider to be the right way, then personally - I’d prefer Antony to Bruno, as much as I don’t particularly rate him either. But I can’t see us ever becoming a top team that is drilled in playing the right way with Bruno at the centre of it - so what is the point in changing the other pieces first when attempting to go in a different direction? For me, it should start with him.
I look at this sequence of play, as an example, and ask myself which guy is Bruno in that sequence? Could he theoretically be a player who contributes to such moves with any consistency? Getting it, giving it short, moving into space to receive, playing it short again. No pass longer than 5 yards, in a crowded space.
I appreciate there are differing views, but for me, I don’t think many people look at this topic from the perspective of the collective enough. They seem to see it as blasphemous that an individual who puts scores and the doors can be questioned. That is the extent of the analysis it appears. In the time, we’ve ranged from terrible at the very worst, to not good enough at the very best. I’m not sure what more people want to see. Is it that we cannot question Bruno because we haven’t seen him with Mbappé, Kane and Rice? If only we swap McTominay and co for then, we’ll be fine, because clearly, Bruno puts up numbers. The issue is, even our ‘not quite good enough’ best has never produced a controlling level of football comparative to the team/s that have been good enough. The teams better than us haven’t had one Ballon’Dor winner in their sides. Their players haven’t cost more than ours. The main difference has been HOW they play as opposed to just who they are.
If we start addressing our issues from a ‘how we play’ perspective, and accepting that as the fundamental flaw to be rectified, then I believe Bruno becomes far less off limits than he is to what I must say is a decreasing section of fans. To me, it is a total and inexplicable blind spot, as our fans have had no problem in identifying productive players as detrimental in recent years. Bruno isn’t Messi or something. He’s not as good at his job as De Gea was at his in his prime, yet many people readily accepted that De Gea was inhibiting HOW we played football and needed to go. People said Lukaku should go because of HOW he played. They said Pogba should go. They say Rashford should go. However, the conversation lacks any nuance or complexity when it concerns Bruno Fernandes for some reason. ‘How can he be at fault when he got an assist?’ is the general sentiment. I genuinely cannot understand it.
And the reality is, we are actually not good enough. Like we can all see that. We are regularly outplayed by inferior players, and have been for years. Perhaps we need a new approach as opposed to simply just signing better individuals than the ones we have? The difference in our play between sides like City and Arsenal is night and day.
Any PL side with Bruno at the centre will not play the football required to finish above City or probably even Arsenal anymore. If the only retort for that is that it would if he had Bellingham, Kane, Rice and Saka alongside him, then people need to have a word with themselves.