You can have a 6 and 8 behind a 10, but those are ultimately just numbers. You cannot have 3 separate lines in a midfield, ultimately, as each individual would be an island. I think there’s a big difference between having three midfielders and having a midfield. A midfield is an engine of the team, and the relationship between all three parts (and the full backs and wingers) is what makes a midfield.
So while you can have a 10 (as I’ve said, Silva and Maddison are 10s), the key is their relationship with the others around them, and this is where Bruno is simply not good enough. What good combination work have you seen in 8 months between Bruno and Mainoo, for example? Literally our 8 and 10. It’s either Mainoo does something special, or Bruno does something special, but they will not combine to weave their way through a team, and to me, that is largely because Bruno simply doesn’t have those fundamental midfield qualities. So instead, our midfield is designed for Mainoo to first do something great, maybe drop a shoulder and beat a player or two - then pass to Bruno 10 yards away who does something great himself. But never are they doing it together.
And I am not overrating Maddison at all, in fact, I am using Maddison as an example so that my point is not dismissed by basically saying something like ‘yea but David Silva is one of the best PL midfielders ever, you can’t say that’s the standard’.
And I don’t think we are built like this due to Rashford and Garnacho. Garnacho has only been in the team for a year. Before him, we had Antony, who has very different qualities, qualities that we fundamentally contradict as a team. Rashford is certainly a direct player who likes to run behind I agree, but Bruno has been in our team 5 years now and has been at the heart of what we do, good and bad. During this period, we have never suffocated opposition (and I mean any opposition, could be a random Championship or League One team in the cup just as much as a top PL side).
When McTominay left last week, Ten Hag justified it by saying we had ‘3 number 10s and only one 6’. Imagine that. Scott Mctominay a ‘number 10’. Is this a player you want to get on the ball in the final and middle thirds to knit play together? This is United’s terrible philosophy of midfield building here, in which our 10 seems to be excused from fundamental midfield work, and instead limited to impacting the scoresheet.
Any player whose worth is determined by G/A is a forward player in my eyes, and there in lies our problem. Be it Bruno, be it Scott - our true philosophy is 442. Which ultimately, will take us nowhere.
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