If we have a top goal scorer up front, his risk taking will result in more wins than draws/losses.
The problem is we don't have one. So when he pulls off a ridiculous pass it doesn't mean anything but when he loses the ball all eyes are on him.
Put KdB in this team and he won't look as good as he is at City. That's the truth. Players like KdB, David Silva, Mata (Chelsea version) and Bruno will look twice as good when they have a top forward to finish off the chances. Bruno at least contributes quite a lot of goals too.
To be fair, KDB would tailor his game to give it away less, he does that for Belgium to my eye (though the stats suggest only a slight improvement) but my guess is he gives the ball away more hitting ambitious through balls and crosses than screwing up link play like Bruno.
But yeah, if Ten Hag can identify the right partner for Bruno - as it's tough to say he's had that here - and get him, we could see Bruno get back to his best without the team needing to be built around him as a purely counter-attacking #10 with tons of space to create. Rashford is a better player with Martial as a 9 to link up with and obviously Valencia and Rooney did well together, so if we can find a 9 who brings out the best in Bruno he should improve. Mata and him looked like they might have chemistry, but that was with both in attacking midfield.
He sort of is our Coutinho for Liverpool figure in that he should probably be sold to Atletico Madrid, PSG or Juventus for say 100M and we let De Gea, Maguire and Fred go to shift wages and we just hand Ten Hag 300M this summer to buy a #9, #10, CM, RB, CB and GK and considering the RB should only cost about 20-25M and the keeper maybe 40M or so, that leaves about 60M per position and that should be enough for Ten Hag to buy damn near anyone he likes who isn't already at a massive club.
He's one of our better players, but he's probably more valuable under a different manager and in a different style. My guess is that Ten Hag likes his effort/running and professionalism and end product and if that sort of thing happens it would be in the summer of 2024 or 2025 and not this coming summer. Too big a change when he's one of only 7 players clearly in the first XI next season (Antony, Bruno, Eriksen, Casemiro, Dalot, Shaw, Lisandro) since Varane and Martial have constant injury issues, though to be fair LW is fine with Garnacho, Sancho and Rashford competing and rotating.
The other similar option I can see would be to sell Sancho as we have Garnacho and Rashford at LW and use the money on fixing 1 or 2 of the above 6 major needs, but Sancho's value is at an all-time low and Bruno's isn't and Sancho is 22 to Bruno's 28, though that would be a massive risk as Bruno has obviously been a far more productive player for us, and again we have better options at LW than as a 10.
If we sign Frenkie De Jong and can push Eriksen to the 10 role, I absolutely wouldn't rule out us selling Bruno and just buying a cheaper #10 that Ten Hag likes to back up Eriksen, with Eriksen backing up De Jong and we're just picking 3 players for 2 spots. Bellingham would be ideal as he wouldn't leave us without any powerful running in midfield like we saw when VDB played ahead of Eriksen against Villa, but we're not getting him and Frenkie and probably not getting either sadly. Maybe Milenkovic-Savic as he's big and powerful and can play as a 10 or more of an 8 if we went 4-3-3 when De Jong doesn't play or even play all 3 when Casemiro sits.
