I think he’s always been an average midfielder, in the sense of his general handling of the ball. He has an exceptionally high end product though, and the question will remain whether that end product can be harvested within a team structure that makes sense.
But as a ‘midfielder’, he’s not that good at all. Compare his ability to a player like Pedri, for example, it’s night and day. But players exist within a wider context of a team, and that is what we need to get right. I’ve shared my views on this enough. I don’t think Bruno makes a team play better, but he often makes the scoreline better. Pedri makes a team play better, which probably more indirectly makes the scoreline better, but without as many direct contributions to it. United have a tradition of wanting match winners and heroes - this ‘catalyst’ to inspire, ‘drive’ and all that stuff. But I think we have overlooked the boring stuff, the nuts and bolts, the details for longer than we can get away with, and until we start from scratch and build a machine piece by piece that works with one another symbiotically - I can’t see us being successful, because our model requires us to have significantly better individuals than every other team, which we won’t do.