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It's actually incredible how he continues to post them. It's like he's completely satisfied with the way we play, and our table standings and performances are irrelevant.
We played better without Mr Force A Chance.
He is actually pretty good on the right. Much better option than putting Rashford there.
Yeah, Bruno is good in either spot. He's better as a #10, but unless Antony comes back and plays well we just don't have a quality RW and our LW (Rashford especially but also Garnacho) is comfortable playing high up the pitch anyways as they're more goalscorers than say Ribery or Hazard types looking to get on the ball deeper and beat players and link up, so Bruno on the right even tucked in makes sense. He's also our best option to actually hit Hojlund with a low cross or through ball even if Antony is healthy.
I agree – we retained possession much better than we do when Bruno plays. I know it was only Palace, but we have been able to lose possession against any side we play – their quality is not the factor.
Hell of a stretch to claim that after one match against very weak opposition.
To play devils advocate for a second the usual argument of "we play horrible without him" is also pretty much only based on one game.
The whole better or worse without any top player debate is tricky because they tend to get rested when we’re playing poor opposition but also when we’re missing other top players too. That many variable and a small sample size makes it hard to draw any conclusions.To play devils advocate for a second the usual argument of "we play horrible without him" is also pretty much only based on one game.
On a serious note though I agree with you, yesterdays match doesnt tell us much about Bruno. For me that was much more about the impact of Amrabat and the balance he adds to our midfield.
The issue was in deep areas before, and that was fixed mainly due to amrabat but also Mount being relatively press resistant to help that as well. It is an issue when our midfield is Bruno and casemiro and then someone else like Eriksen, where everyone is just intent on playing a killer ball. Toss Mount and/or Amrabat in and suddenly you have some players who know how to slow the play down and recycle possession. Bruno is still absolutely vital and the key for us to actually be creative. Palace were tumescent last night, most teams will work harder than that (on the weekend it'll be a different game), but without Bruno, games like that can easily still turn into a 0-0 where we are slow to break down and lack the killer ball.
Would be interesting to see how we fair like that.
96 touches
Does he? He's one of the main reasons we are so slow in the build-up phase.
Yeah, I think you are right. I meant especially in the final third, where his first instinct is moving on the ball with the 2nd or 3rd touch in 8 out of 10 cases. I see your point though, when he is dropping deeper, he is sometimes overthinking it. I think, it doesn't hurt us too often though because in those situation, there isn't much momentum to die from him. Plus the criticism is valid for many players. The buildup looks a big problem to me these days. I'd really like to know, why the Cup game looked so different. Whether thats more on CP not giving a feck or really the absense of Bruno and Rash...
It was a bit of both.
Definitely. Slight resemblence of the Pogba conundrum, who also had a reputation of being great in the difficult stuff once in three matches but a little subpar in the rest of those 270 minutes. Difficult no to loose hope for Rash and Bruno... You'd think, there should a place for both of them when the team is a functional unit, but looks like we are really far from that. And until we are, those two might even be a factor of making it harder for others. That being said, injuries are an issue for sure, disciplinary stuff as well. A few other players not really hitting the ground running. So feels a bit unfair to single them out but no doubt they are our most productive players and therefor have the most expectations on them
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Do you believe every single transfer rumour in this world?
Hardly like the source was caughtoffside was it mate? BBC Sport are as reputable as they come.
That was just bluffing and agents at work as usual when it comes to us.
I was thinking the same at half time. Bruno is great at making risky passes, which we would call 'Hollywood passes' in Pogba's time, and you can tell he just loves being on the edge of the box to score or assist. And when all that works out it looks like he is amazing and we're having a perfect game. The problem is when we can't get past the opponents midfield. Bruno offers very little in terms of building up from the back. In today's game we relied heavily on Dalot to get the ball forward because we just couldn't penetrate the midfield and we couldn't go left because Rashford didn't have a great game either.
It's an aggregator account, give us the link where the BBC mentions this.
