Playing Bruno in his default position wouldn't hurt - for starters. McTominay is occupying second striker role now, effectively pushing Bruno around.
Bruno was at number 10 when we utterly domimated the ball in midfield vs AFC Bournemouth. We still didn't score thanks to the exact problem as yesterday!
Maybe the first goal doesn't happen if we close down Paqueta / or track Bowen. Either of those 2 things are infinitely more likely with Amrabat instead of McTominay on the pitch. That's second.
I can respect the argument but Personally I don't buy that.
First Evans just switched off instead of keeping an eye on Bowen's run. Second, we've also seen Amrabat either beaten or stand off some one in that area so it's not necceserily true he'd press Paqueta there.
Furthermore, if we are brutally honest, Evans keeps his eye on their cf, Paqueta's glorious pass is rendered useless.
Thus even if I granted your premise. We still lose 1 nil thanks to Mainoo's error. No difference what soever if we change the midfield selection.
I'd argue that Amrabat is playing the deepest midfielder so maybe we would be able to escape the 2nd goal as well but that's a stretch.
On that we agree.
This isn't only about McTominay, it's about the team being setup the wrong way as a consequence of his presence.
Which is where we disagree. Right now he is just occupying the role Mount was bought for, in addition to being our top scorer thanks to our dead flanks.(Imagine the shame: Mctominay, Bruno, and Casemiro all have more goals than our forwards in the league!)
He strictly starts there now simply because both Mount and Eriksen have been injured. Thats It! This season ETH ditched his 4-2-3-1 for a 4-3-3 with one holder and two pushed up. ( i.e the wolves game at OT) The notion ETH "changed the set up to fix him in" is demonstratably wrong!
The ONLY thing that changes with him in the side is if he plays deeper than Bruno, unlike yesterday, he is purposely kept out of the build up phase of play. Otherwise ETH's current set up is one shield infront of defence, then two pushed up high, with either a fullback of a cb pushing up alongside the sole pivot for build up. Then without the ball the two pushed up drop all the way to between the sole pivot and the full back. That at times this season we have seen a Bruno making tackles almost at right back trying to ball win., for example.
Biggest issues we've had to the set up this term is first, the rotation of injuries in center defence and to midfielders. It has not only prevented us controlling the defensive space between our 3 man defence line, the sole pivot and the pressing 5, it has utterly stopped us developing ANY understandings and partnerships at the base and connector phases of the set up.
Then second and worst of all, our starting wide men have gone mentally AWOL either displaying little understanding of a creative wide attacker role (Rashford, Antony, to a lesser extent Garnacho for he is a kid), due to off field personal drama (Antony, Sancho) or have been injured (Amad) or plain under used (Pellistri)...not to mention straight up laziness (Rashford)
Me thinks till we find a solution out wide. Even with a return to full strength and midfield we will be in for misery. Like Rasmus has been going this goalless this long thank to his partner attackers hardly ever passing to him. I'll be impressed if we get to 10 goals over the next 8 weeks of football. Flabergasted is we hit 50 plus in the league this season.