It was in the 67th minute against Chelsea that Fred had his moment, curling a right-foot shot from outside the area. The effort, although well-struck, went past the far post. The Brazilian cursed his missed opportunity but Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seemed almost charmed, clapping his hands and offering an encouraging thumbs-up.
Much was made of Fred following his arrival from Shakhtar Donetsk for £52 million in 2018 and it is thought Jose Mourinho sought to use him as a means to complement Paul Pogba in a retooled midfield.
That did not come to pass. Solskjaer’s arrival partway through the season saw the improvement of several players, but Fred found himself lost in the shuffle. The following season saw a marked improvement and this season, his partnership with Scott McTominay is one of the most common pairings in the starting XI.
A solid performance in the Manchester derby continued his unbeaten run at the Etihad Stadium as a United player (three wins), yet there are still questions over his qualities. The eye test says Fred is solid at several things, but it can be harder to see what made him the subject of interest from United and Manchester City three years ago.
Fred is a strange United player, an expensive 28-year-old described with the plucky adjectives that may be used for an academy graduate. He is a curious player in a curious midfield.
What is Fred good at?
The 17th minute of the derby offered a good example of what Fred brings. John Stones attempts to play the ball to Kevin De Bruyne, which sees Fred spring to life.
He not only closes De Bruyne down but runs at an angle that allows him to intercept the Belgian’s pass.
After a brief moment of control, Fred hits a pass off his left foot to Marcus Rashford.
Rashford cuts into a more central area and has a shot from distance that Ederson saves.
The reverse angle shows that Fred is smart enough to begin moving towards De Bruyne as Stones makes his pass…
…and he pauses and checks himself when the ball reaches De Bruyne.
It would have been easy for Fred to continue his run and attempt to make the tackle but, perhaps realising he would not get to the City man in time for his first touch, wisely checks himself rather than rush in.
This pause gives Fred multiple options: rather than risk being dribbled or passed around, he is in a good position to mark the space and make an interception, while still being in a good position to continue pressing De Bruyne if the Belgian tries to pass or carry the ball forwards. In the space of a few seconds, Fred twice made correct decisions as to how to turn the ball over and then feed Rashford.
This is a footballer making intelligent decisions quickly.
Fred’s style broadly falls into what is known in his native Brazil as a “segundo volante” — a do-everything defensive midfielder who tends to do his tackling and interceptions all over the pitch, rather than sit in central areas and work as a stopper or destroyer, known as a “primeiro volante” (the volante name derives from former San Lorenzo and Napoli defensive midfielder Carlos Volante).
They can do defensive and attacking actions, but players such as Fred are best when paired with an outright defensively minded player (the primeiro volantes), and often thrive with a more attacking player ahead. If Pep Guardiola had signed him, Fred would likely have been used similarly to Rodri or Ilkay Gundogan.
This statistical radar, courtesy of Statsbomb and assessed against the league average for a player in his position, helps illustrates the type of game Fred is bringing to United in 20-21.
Statsbomb radars identify important aspects of a player’s role and evaluate how many times a player performs each of those actions per 90 minutes. Typically, the closer the colour is towards the outer edge of the circle, the more a player performs that action. The larger the total area of a radar covered, the more aspects a player has to their game.
The above radar tells us:
- His standout skill is interceptions — he does it at least twice a game (2.49 possession-adjusted interceptions per 90 minutes — the 11 o’clock spike on the radar), such as the chance he seized from De Bruyne.
- He is above average at tackling, pressuring the ball and regaining it from his pressing (all the shapes from 10 to 8 o’clock counter-clockwise). Fred’s energy and match reading sense make him a valuable presence in a team that can be weak out of possession.
- He is slightly above average (nearly all of the shapes from 1 to 4 o’clock on the radar) on the ball. Fred’s numbers for deep progressions, expected goals (xG) assisted and xG build-up are all above average, but suggest a player who prefers to work in the first two-thirds of the pitch.
Here is what your gut probably tells you when watching Fred:
- At his best, he is a perpetual motion machine, rather than an outright engine. He would be a fun player to pick up if you were a captain drafting a Premier League five-a-side team, but it would not be wise to build an 11-a-side one around him.
What is Fred not so good at?
When he does things like this — against West Ham United in the FA Cup.
He spots Bruno Fernandes out wide and attempts to play a first time, left-footed pass but that is…
…not good. Leading to one of Fred’s more common facial expressions, that of apology.
Fred has the match-reading intelligence to nearly make the correct decision every time, but he is similar to
Victor Lindelof in that he can lack the physicality and quickness of touch to consistently execute his ideas.
Fred’s software is near cutting edge, but his execution of below-the-shoulders moves needs work.
The Watford striker Troy Deeney once claimed Fred’s need to make multiple touches means he is often a pressing trigger for opponents: you can dispossess him when he is taking a third or fourth touch, or you cajole him into misplacing simple passes.
Although this
might have been true in the 2018-19 season and early weeks of 2019-20 when he clearly had issues with the pace of the English game, Fred has noticeably improved.
He looks visibly stronger and capable of shrugging off an initial challenge if he needs time to sort his feet out. Fred’s passing range is good, he can send the ball 20-30 yards, but his passing vocabulary — as in how he strings together sequences of play to contribute to his team’s build-up — needs work.
Watch him for long enough and you can see him assess potential passes and decide against them as he does not trust his ability to pull off the pass. This can sometimes help United keep the ball but it can also hinder. Attacking moves fizzle out with his reluctance to release the ball. He has been holding extra training sessions with United coach and former midfield metronome Michael Carrick to work on his shooting and passing.
Fernandes has said his team-mate joins himself, Juan Mata, Marcus Rashford and Alex Telles in the free-kick sessions. That said, Fernandes’ admission “Fred also stays, but it’s just to have fun with us” says it all about his chances of getting on them in matches.
This brings us to Fred’s shooting, which can best be explained as rushed.
Fred has scored one Premier League goal (two more in the Europa League) and he has a shooting map comprised mostly of potshots from outside the area. He was not originally envisioned to be a goal-getting midfielder and although he is underperforming his xG (Fred “should” have scored about three league goals by now), he is rarely picking up the ball and shooting from good areas of the pitch.
This becomes clearer when you look at his shot map this season, where Solskjaer’s thumbs up at Chelsea makes a lot more sense.
The majority of Fred’s shooting opportunity comes from his placement on United’s corners. At 5ft 7in, he is often stationed outside of the area when the ball is delivered, so he gets onto clearances from the opposition before attempting to shoot through a crowd of bodies to score (similar to
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s approach to shooting while playing for Southampton).
Fred’s shots are of the low-risk/low-reward, mildly-sensible game-management variety: he somehow pulls out a golazo from range (which has not happened this season) or the shot is blocked, deflected or saved.
Take a look at United’s attacking shape when he got onto the ball for his shot against Chelsea. There are no real options, so Fred tries his luck.
Fred’s outside-the-box efforts are not terrible. Whether they are deflected and win another corner, or give the opposition a goal kick, they do give United’s defence a low level of protection to the counter-attack. Teams cannot spring
Demba Ba-style counter-attacks in Europe this season off corners when Fred does this.
Fred registered no shots against City,
which might have been a coaching instruction. It is an open secret that Fred is not the best shooter with his right foot, which makes his effort against Chelsea more surprising. In the nicest way, Fred might be the youngest 28-year-old in the Premier League: you can clearly see parts of his game improve as he gets acclimatised to the pace of the English game.
What does this mean for United?
It was in October that we theorised the “McFred” combination of him and McTominay was the best-balanced midfield pivot in Solskjaer’s preferred 4-2-3-1.
The duo may lack the ability to make line-breaking passes and the ability to redirect traffic of the Project Restart duo of Pogba and Nemanja Matic, but Solskjaer is using “McFred” more.
They are hard-working mobile midfielders, with the £52 million man more talented in interceptions and the Scotland international showing qualities in the tackle. They look better off as No 8 box-to-box midfielders rather than No 6-style defensive players. McTominay’s increased attacking output this season is perhaps the clearest sign of this, but the way the duo cover for each other gives a degree of balance that Solskjaer enjoys, especially in bigger games.
There are drawbacks, notably in how neither man is consistent in their creative output or in their execution of passes during build-up play. McTominay tends to stand in what is known as “shadow cover” occupying areas of the pitch too close to opposition players making potential passes to him harder, while Fred’s passing is often erratic. Solskjaer alleviates this problem by empowering Fernandes to be more aggressive in his passes forwards, and the playmaker often drifts left-to-right to help the wide players make the passing triangles and diamonds that Fred and McTominay could be doing — although these sorts of runs have been
falling in recent weeks.
Fred is a willing runner, but he can be overwhelmed when he is paired with Matic, who is less mobile and prefers to drop deeper. His partnership in a two with Pogba is a double-edged sword: the Frenchman easing the creative burden with his line-breaking passes while giving Fred more defensive responsibility.
His on-field relationship with Donny van de Beek seems to have teething issues;
as we wrote here after their last start together, the Dutchman makes several runs into areas of the field that go missing as they fall outside the Brazilian’s passing capabilities.
These are Fred-based problems as well as issues with United as a whole. Solskjaer’s experiments with a midfield diamond fell by the wayside as he lacks a mobile player, skilled in tackling and passing to sit at the base of the four. Fred is best roaming the pitch making interceptions, McTominay looks better closer to goal and Matic is 32, unable to cover ground as he did during his 2015-to-2017 peak.
United’s starting XI has issues, stemming from their lack of specialised personnel in key areas. Solskjaer has done well to get two players to do the work of one man, but eventually, changes need to come.
Which brings us to…
What happens next?
Fred has done well to turn himself from a potential flop to one of the (near) ever-presents.
He is a good asset and one reason the club is operating at a top-four contender/Europa League favourite level. If United wish to take the jump and become genuine contenders for the Premier League and Champions League, then Fred will have to improve his execution on and off the ball, or United will find a replacement for him in the starting line-up through the transfer window.
The Athletic does not believe the club are actively looking for a successor, but if someone is going to take the midfielder’s place they are likely to be an out-and-out defensive midfielder, a No 6.
Fred is an erratic defensive box-to-box player often playing next to another inconsistent midfielder in McTominay. Together, they shield a back four that has ambitions of playing with a high line, but lacks the recovery pace if caught on the transition, and ahead of the duo is a Portuguese playmaker making enough creative passes for everyone.
Fred is a needed — if sometimes — frustrating cog in a strangely dysfunctional side, with the skill set and mindset to be a benefit to United’s squad for years, even if the team do make the jump and become more functional in their playing rhythms.
There is a reason the United manager gave him a thumbs up after shooting wide. There is a decent hard-working player in Fred who is getting better with encouragement and a clear role.
The Brazilian might not be the final piece in unlocking Pogba and turbo-charging United to supercar levels, but he does have value keeping things ticking along. He is not big or flashy, but he is Fred.
