People have some romantic and perhaps nostalgic vision of this one man wrecking ball winning trophies alone, it doesn’t work like that. If it did, why did Bruno not drag Sporting to first place in Portugal? Bruno has made our team better, which we needed it to be. Even the majority of Pogba’s critics on the caf had called him our ‘best player’ for years - but it wasn’t enough.
We lined up at Anfield last season with a front 6 of Fred, Matic, Pereira, James, Williams and Martial. It’s fecking shocking - we desperately needed to lift the quality, and Bruno has contributed to that, as has other key players simply getting fit and getting older.
No matter how much ‘dragging’ Bruno has done - he would not have dragged the 20 year old version of Rashford or the 21 year old version of Martial anywhere. We had bet big on young talent who were not ready a few years ago regardless, yet were given key roles in our team. Others like Sanchez, Mkhitaryan and co who were brought in to deliver immediately had failed. Pogba was never going to ‘drag’ that team anywhere - especially as he was still young and developing himself. He wasn’t ready to do that, and the players around him were not ready to be dragged. But we believed in their talent, and Bruno has come into the squad at a good time where the profile of our better players is stronger - and we have added a few more of the right profile like Maguire and Fred who can perform now.
People wanted a 23-25 year old Pogba to drag a 21 year old Rashford, 21 year old Martial, Mkhi, Young, Jones, Rojo and co to titles. Bruno has the mid-twenties version of a lot of our young talents, and some better leaders around him too. He also has a more mature and better version of Pogba to help, as opposed to the younger version who was more erratic.
It’s worth remembering when everyone is scratching their heads looking for what agenda is causing Pogba to play well that he is 27 now and also entering his own prime as a footballer. Perhaps he is just getting better and is maturing?!