good to hear! Hopefully the Bruno/Ronaldo connection stands to us because this lad is definitely the real deal. If he can stay injury free he looks pretty much a certainty to be class.
8
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 58
- Goals
- 28
- Assists
- 17
- Yellow cards
- 7
- Status
Great post! Too many on here are result orientated while foregoing how important the process is to achieving those results. Bruno’s general play is too poor and is brushed aside because of his great stats. It’s why I hate including set piece goals when judging any player.
I will say he was better in the arsenal game with his possession and us drawing shouldn’t be a negative. We should have won it if cavani and rashford were better.
Scholes has already picked up on his forceful plays and it will be very interesting to see how he changes the game now that we aren’t winning so many penalties and our forwards and firing.
Everything that's wrong with the abuse of stats. Bruno was close to useless in the Arsenal game, we could have played someone like Cleverley if all we wanted was player to play risk free game.
Bruno is second or third in expected assists this season, shows the quality of chances he has created. Creating chances is also important and as part of general play. Asking a player to pass 5 yards sideways to keep these stats at good rate is not something to be proud of.
Just because he had around 90% pass completion doesn't mean he was good with possession, that means he didn't make use of possession better. Pass completion is not important. 80% or 90% is not a big difference if you start to dissect the stats instead of just look at 10% difference.
But we created great chances and could have won by 3 if cavani and rashford both did better. That’s the point! Against a team like arsenal possession does matter as we are able to fashion out better chances. I don’t care as much with his pass completion in games were we are expected to dominate but in these close matches he needs to be more conservative so we can have the ball more.
Just thinking back to the Liverpool game we could have won potentially win if Bruno wasn’t so impatient with his passes. I don’t know how you guys can watch that type of play and approve it. It’s dishonest thinking Bruno should lump the ball forward every time he gets it. He is much smarter and better than that.
In a game where player makes around 45 passes, what do you think is a difference between having completion of 80% and 90%? How many passes are missed?
In Arsenal game, he made 47 passes at 90% completion rate, creating one very low chance.
V Villa, he made 47 passes at 78% completion rate, creating 5 chances
Its so obvious in which game he was better.
Just FYI, difference in both games is, Bruno misplaced 5 passes vs Arsenal and 12 passes vs Villa. So difference between these 2 games is just 7 passes. That's how negligible it is.
He should be rated on how much difference he makes, not how he just retains possession. If that's so important then we can stick to Lingard in AM position, he is master of retaining possession so that others can build attacks
That's just clutching straws now. We would have won the game if Bruno converted easy chance or Pogba converted his chance.
I don't know how you can watch football and can't see how creating chances is so important than completing 5 more passes on an average.
Something I posted about Pogba few months ago, still very much relevant for Bruno too..
Good post. Also there is a clever play with stats and percentages. For example, if a player completes 8/10 passes and other player completes 9/10 passes, percentage wise there is a difference of 10% but in raw numbers it's just 1 more misplaced pass.
On an average midfielders play around 70 passes, if one player completes 60 passes and other player completes 65 passes then percentage wise it's 85% completion vs 92%. But it's just 5 more completed passes and no one even knows in which area those extra passes are completed. Usually deeper midfielders plays lot of short passes with CBs.
I tried to take few relevant stats for the players compared (last 3 seasons)
Some of the criticism is weird as the points raised are Pogba vs mix of 3-4 midfielders.
He doesn't dribble more than Modric/Thiago, he doesn't create as many chances as Kroos, his goal scoring record is no better than KdB . It's all mashed up, cherry picking better stats from 3-4 CMs and then point out how Pogba is not better than them.
Anyways, Pogba misplaces around 5-6 passes more than other 3 CMs on an average but his quality of chances is always better than other 3 midfielders, this season and last , his expected assists per 90 mins is almost same as other 3 combined.
Is 5-6 passes worth what Pogba brings to the team?
Goals from Open play Pogba 13 Kroos + Modric 16 Kroos + Thiago 16 Modric + Thiago 14
Assists (Open Play) Pogba 21 Kroos + Modric + Thiago 26 Kroos + Modric 19 Kroos + Thiago 12 Modric + Thiago 21
XA/90 Pogba 0.56 Kroos + Modric 0.69 Kroos + Thiago 0.55 Modric + Thiago 0.64
Btw, again this is not to say Pogba > any midfielder, just to point out how midfielders are different and contribute is so many other ways. There is no need to take one particular attribute from each midfielder to compare them with Pogba.
He is not a Xavi or a Pirlo so you guys can't look at him and compare completion. He tries much riskier passes and is very straight forward and assertive. His mind is focused on getting goals and assists because you can have 100% pass completion all you want but the only stats that truly matter in football are the ones that involve the ball in the net. Thats what wins games and Bruno provides that at an insanely stupid clip.
Point in case the FA CUP game where he scored that banger to win the game. Would you prefer him to have 90% pass completion and United lose 3-2 or he have 75% and United win 3-2 with him scoring the winning goal.
I know which one I would take.
Yeah, pass completion is not a problem at all. It would be a problem if players who don't create chances gives away possession. For players like Bruno, Pogba it shouldn't be a problem.
We all love this guy - he has a mean shot, great awareness, great at set-pieces but he needs to revisit his first 2/3 games where he dictated play and was looking for passes, not playing for assists or goals - otherwise, the team becomes crippled and we end up playing for his next assist or goal - messed up stuff! An assist or goal can come from anywhere if the team plays well.
I don't think that we should be at the mercy of forced perceived individual brilliance that does not match the desired quality. You cannot be a Utd midfielder who can't look after the ball - he is not a dribbler yet he loses the ball passing to the opponents far too much.
I agree with this. You are at Manutd not Sporting still. This is another level up where you should be able to create chances whilst looking after the football just as well.
He really needs to sharpen that side of the game, its causing us to lose control in games. The problem we have is all 11 players are the same. None of them can consistently keep the ball well. I cannot think of anyone on that pitch who I can trust with the football on their feet. The only one is on the bench,.
It’s not a straightforward science. After all, you have even strikers like Aguero left out of a team despite scoring more goals for an inferior goalscorer at times.
Of course, creating and taking chances is important in football, that cannot be denied. But at the same time, we don’t want to be drawn into end to end football matches all the time, you also want some control - which I guess has the effect of giving you a platform to create chances but also reducing the amount of chances you concede.
Football is a results business, and Bruno has undoubtedly improved our results by impacting the scoreline. But I would say he has perhaps made our team’s results better more than he has made the team ‘play better’. This is part of the reason why pundits and commentators seem so confused by us continually picking up results. It’s because watching us - we don’t seem great, although we have players like Bruno who are deciding games in moments. But there’s always that lingering expectation that it’s not going to go well for us, and that is because we do not control games or generally speaking - ‘play well’. This of course is not exclusively down to Bruno - it’s more the type of team we have constructed with AWB, Fred, McTominay, Rashford too which means we are always going to be a moments and transitions team as these players lack composure and maturity in possession. They are all high impact players, as is Bruno. They are all about spectacular moments rather than controlled and composed domination.
Stylistically, we’re a bit of a mismatch, and this is where, despite being a big Ole supporter, I think we can look to the coaching. We’ve built a team with players who don’t look to control a game, and a few that do. Players like Shaw, Maguire, Martial and Pogba to a degree have a certain profile, and the others have the opposite. It seems that our strategy to an extent under Ole is just assemble good players and install them with the right attitude and mentality. At the very, very top - I don’t think it’s enough. So in Bruno’s defence, this isn’t about him per se, as I have said - he’s the right 10 for the team that we have now. The only issue is the philosophy of the team we have now probably won’t make us the very best IMO.
I'm not going to repeat the same posts again, I have covered everything I wanted to say in this post.
I agree he’s not as specialized in the millimeter department as a David Silva, Iniesta or Bernardo Silva. And that he would suit most versions of Bayern we’ve seen than at least Pep’s Barca, though I’d say one thing he is even more hungry for than goals, are attacking openings in the final third with passes, runs or setting up others to pass quickly, and I’d be curious to see what he could contribute of forward thrust and directness to some of the latter Barca versions, who have fitted Messi with several players suited for fast attacking football (Dembele, That French Guy With The You Tube Account, Suarez also) and put them under the cosh of Messi’s build ups. But he’d probably just have to do what Messi wants and wouldn’t be more than just useful at that, I can imagine. He’s very well suited to play under Solskjær though.
I agree with you. He's a direct player who looks for the killer pass more often than not compared to other players which results in him giving the ball away cheaply at times. But as you pointed out, we play a very direct style of football on the counter attack which suits him. But I'll be honest, he's not a player that wows me on the ball compared to say a Jack Grealish who is technically of a superior level both as a passer of the ball and as a dribbler in tight spaces. Bruno's game relies on numbers and if he doesn't score or assist his contribution in the build up phase is very basic in comparison to Jack Grealish who may not score or assist as many but will enhance the quality of the whole collective and is also superb to watch with his mercurial ability on the ball.
I don't expect many to agree with me but for me the sign of a great player is how they enhance the transitions in open play via their ability to dribble in tight spaces, link up with team mates and pass the ball to a high level, even when not registering a assist or goal.
Indeed. It’s certainly the sign of a great midfield player at the very least. To me, that’s pretty much exactly what the bread and butter of their role is.
Everything is measured in output these days, but ultimately, football is a team game, and I think you will go further if your strategy is to have a team that beats teams rather than players that beat teams. Right now, I would say that we are quite clearly the latter.
Excellent point well made
Again it's amazing how his performance and stats are played down just because he had few bad games.
I'll finish of by saying and sharing the following. We had Ryan Giggs on our LW for many years and he might not have scored/assisted as many as what we will likely see from players in the current side in a similar position. But Giggs' ability in the transition due to his ability to dribble at pace whilst keeping the ball completely under his spell used to drag opposition players out of position which used to open up space for others to exploit. He was a player when in his peak that used to get fans out of their seats when he was in full flow. And his ability in the transition used to open up the game for others in the team who used to benefit via goals/assists. Below is a video of Giggs which demonstrates his ability in the transition which was extremely dangerous for the opposition and if you compare it to what we see now then that should tell you how far we've fallen IMO.
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That finish from the pobga through ball against arsenal for me was a clear case of a player just being 5% lower in energy levels he just rushed it and clearly didnt have the same concentration on the finish. He needs a rest a couple of weeks badly.
What a result for you yesterday!
Man Utd 9:0 Southampton
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Him in that first half with Cavani was cheat mode!
It was 15 before the assist for the 9th, right?
Didn't really play well. And yet he has two assists and a goal.
He's fully back, penalty and assists. The Bruno show is back. 
2 assists and a goal
Good to see him being more patient in the last few games. Wish he'd given that penalty to Greenwood.
I wanted him to get subbed in the first half to give him some rest. Still, he's my captain in fpl so I can't complain too much
Class performance there.
Tried way too many of those little flicks on the edge of the box. When he's not trying to force it though, he's superb.
You know with Bruno even if he’s not playing well he’ll keep huffing and puffing until something falls for him. Glad he got a more numbers that’ll help him relax
I think people don't see goals and assists till later in the match from him and start calling it a bad game.
I thought he was very good today. Knitted the play cleanly and was regularly a pass away from playing somebody in for a goal.
Great game in my opinion.
I thought he was very good today. Knitted the play cleanly and was regularly a pass away from playing somebody in for a goal.
Great game in my opinion.
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This.
It's becoming a running theme to say "he had a bad game but...". It's nonsense, he was class tonight. People saying it over-and-over, obviously don't understand his role.
He's a real life football manager legend.
Some nice little touched around the 18 yard area and cushioned the header well for the 9th goal.
Yes, it's 16 now.
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