I agree with this. I can't see how Bruno+Mount+Casemiro will work. Casemiro is too slow, and he will become slower due to his age. Mount is too similar to Bruno, but worse. If Casemiro was younger and faster, this might work, but not now. And due to the fact that Bruno is the captain and Mount is ETH's (expensive) decision, we are going to see these three many times together. Add Antony (who is also ETH's boy and he is going to get many starts) and our midfield seems suspect.
I don't think it would matter if Casemiro was younger and faster, and I think this system is going to see an awful lot of unfair stick come his way, where he gets criticised to death on places like this because he mysteriously isn't able to cover the ground of 3 players, which literally no midfielder on earth would be able to do, and which is the whole issue with the ridiculous system ETH has decided to deploy since signing Mount.
I've seen a couple of comparisons to how City set up but I don't see how its similar at all. They play a completely different system and also make sure they always have at least one person who will help Rodri do the leg work or occupy the midfield space. Sometimes they have two or three. They also have wide players who are much more withdrawn and less direct than ours who again will fill this void if someone else goes forwards. Their fullbacks will also invert to cover the space when they play with 3 at the back. If anything they overload the middle area to suffocate teams which is the complete opposite of what we are doing.
The rest of your post is exactly my concern. Its a broken system and I'm very worried ETH will persist with it until we either get spanked 6-0 by someone or have such a poor run of results it puts his job under pressure. I don't understand where its come from as all last season he seemed very in tune with what was happening on the pitch and what the team needed to help it. He seems to think Mason Mount is something completely different from what he actually is, which again is just going to lead to him getting ripped apart by our fans when a theme of every game is the opposition running through our midfield after Mount is too weak to win a loose ball or is caught 10 yards ahead of the play.
I mean hopefully I'm wrong (well me and nearly everyone else who watches us) and it somehow comes together, but on the face of it, its just such a ridiculously bad idea I can't possibly see how it will ever work. There has been no sign of our other players adapting to any specific instructions to help plug the problems it creates.
Yep. No improvement in play style and the dumb idea of playing two no.10s in the midfield is something I'm not going to put up with. Eriksen was a bad idea anyways last season and we just bought another one with legs.
I dont know when we will have a management that emphasises on having a solid midfield. That wont get overrun by relegation favorites. feck this shit.
Mount is definitely not an Eriksen with legs, as you will notice from the big gaping hole in our midfield that has only suddenly appeared in pre-season and against Wolves. If we'd signed an Eriksen with legs we'd actually be pretty sorted (well until Casemiro gets sent off for shaking someone's hand too aggressively or something).
I would have to guess Eriksen with legs is what ETH
thinks Mount is, but he isn't. He plays much higher up the pitch, doesn't have Eriksen's vision, game reading or passing abilities, or his composure, or his ability to take the ball on the turn and not go backwards/sideways constantly, or his positional awareness, or his balding hair. He literally has none of the things Eriksen is good at and also plays in a completely different position, which is why its such a fecking baffling plan to replace one with the other. It'd be like swapping Shaw for McTominay and then ignoring that your left back is terrible at being a left back and is also stood in midfield for some reason.
Signing Mount made no sense to me, and now its become clear how ETH plans to use him, it makes even less sense, despite making no sense to start with. Not only is it not solving any of our problems but its created a much bigger problem than any of the ones we already had. We now have to sign another midfielder to replace Mason Mount, who isn't a midfielder, but has been signed to replace Fred and play ahead of Eriksen, who are both midfielders. An absolute needless mess.
What is ETH planning to do now when Casemiro can't play btw? That'll be a fun watch (for anyone who doesn't support Man Utd).
Side note: TBH the idea Eriksen is a problem in our team is one of the most weirdly out of touch views ever to appear on this site imo. Someone decided he can't play in midfield presumably based on how he used to play for Tottenham about 10 years ago, and others just hopped on the bandwagon, completely ignoring that Eriksen + Casemiro was outperforming almost every other midfield in the league for a good chunk of last season, despite both being ridiculously overworked due to our fixtures and lack of other reliable squad options.
