Most likely Eriksen, fits the profile Schone was at Ajax. Danish aging attacking midfielder/winger.
It's true, if he wants to replicate his most succesful Ajax system and we don't sign De Jong, it could very well be one of
McTom or Fred + Eriksen for CM
With Bruno on top as the most attacking midfielder for our strongest line-up in Ten Hag's mind.
With Eriksen playing deeper you'd have a lot of pure football in midfield and I'm sure it's something Ten Hag (initially) wants to try. The big question marks being whether it's viable tactically against PL teams, and how does Eriksen click there, how many matches can he play next season? And of course there's the problem, what if we lose a match or two with that formation? Louis van Gaal quickly got scared at United and started to implement a very risk averse and boring control oriented style of posession based football, which I think cost him later on, especially in his second season when we broke a record for least amount of goals scored, and generally played without any balls or bravery.
Ten Hag is a bit more of a stubborn maniac. I remember in 2018 at Ajax he used this weird formation against PSV with Frenkie in defense and they lost 3-0. Then another game against PSV five months later where he tried roughly the same tactics, and lost 3-0 again
But this didn't stop him and he kept on playing risky attacking football and attacking formations, also in the big games and eventually it clicked and they had that monster season soon after. Let's hope the pressure of the Manchester United job and the calls for a manager's head after every single fecking defeat don't make him more pragmatic and timid out of fear for losing his job early on.