I wouldn't know, tbf, thus the "if rumours are true". I'm not British/Irish, so my knowledge of all these journos is limited to what i read from/about them on this forum.
Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me. We spent the majority of Solskjaer's tenure treating the midfield, more or less, as a nuisance. We never put much thought into it, and its primary function was as a breakwater for a team with a low work rate that was trying to support a tactical plan which consisted of three forwards and a gunslinger playmaker behind them.
Not that he would be more effective under the current regime. ETH showed that he wanted to address the issues in the middle of the park but, and this is the irony with all the people who accuse him for being dogmatic, instead of building a midfield to support a system, he tried to create a midfield around what he inherited. So, a pure defensive midfielder (that the whole Caf had been crying out for) to screen a shaky defence, with Bruno as a final third creator. In other words, sacrifice a more balanced approach in favour of a "mix of players with different qualities all together". As a pundit in my country calls it: "not a midfield of three, but a midfield of 1+1+1". Thing is, the way we're playing, we don't need Bellingham or FdJ in that #8 role to play a more expansive brand of football. We need a miracle.
All in all, either rumour is believable. That the people who advise Bellingham told him to stay away from United in the early stages of his development or that we told him and his people that, at that point in time, what we needed was to enhance the McFred experience, not to deviate from it. Not because we didn't rate Bellingham, mainly because we had already made a conscious decision to make sacrifices and accommodations for Rashford, Martial, Greenwood and Bruno. After all, he is much more talented than the water-carriers who get praised on here for "putting a shift in" to risk his development playing for this United side.
Which, if the rumours are true, would be my point. Because, even now, we are a team that produces and finds first-team minutes for midfielders who offer little else than running around. It's either that or high end-product numbers. And we do have a player for the spaces Bellingham's currently occupying at Real Madrid. So, he wouldn't be getting the same numbers here. He would be doing other stuff, midfield stuff that would shine even more in a balanced team, but we don't care about those things or those players. And this is one of the reasons why Bellingham is where he is and we are where we are, preparing to park the bus so that we won't get annihilated by our city rivals in a few hours.
