It doesn't really matter what position we've played him in, he's always had to be our main playmaker as we haven't had another midfielder capable of actually doing it. Despite that, when we've put the best three man midfields out it's still generally worked.
In the past the best combination on paper was Pogba-Matic-Herrera. The only two times we ever saw that combination get a proper run of games was towards the end of 17/18 (although Fellaini was also in there sometimes instead of Matic or Herrera) and after Ole came in. Both some of our best periods. In fact I just quickly went through the stats. In the two years that we had all three of them in the team, they played just 15 league games together. 12 wins, 2 draws and just the one loss. What's more, the loss and one draw came in the first two games they ever played together, which means in the next 13 games we had 12 wins and a draw. Raises the question why the hell didn't we see it more? It's literally up there with the form that City and Liverpool have showed over the last few years.
In theory it should then have become Pogba-Matic-Fred. A combination we saw play 6 times in 18/19 for 3 wins and 3 losses, but this was while Fred was struggling to get used to the English game. He came back a completely different player the following season but we've never seen that combination step onto the field at the same time again since. We've seen Bruno-Matic-Fred four times though, for 3 wins and a draw.
Strange to think that over the course of 3 seasons, we've only played the combination that most fans thought was our strongest 19 times. One sixth of the time. And in those 19 games we've literally shown title winning form. Makes you wonder why we didn't see it a hell of a lot more often and why we didn't build our team for that?
