I think it’s a bit simplistic and just hopeful to take this position of ‘now he has a good coach, it will be alright’. He lacks a lot of technical and physical abilities. Not sure where Ten Hag is going to find that from. Take his wild swing yesterday that led to Palace’s goal. It’s one thing for coaches to tell him to play it simpler, but it’s another thing to have the ability to do it. The alternative to him attempting a first time pass in that occasion was to get the ball down, under relative pressure in the centre of midfield, and find a pass - a pass that may not even be staring him in the face once he manages to get the ball down. He might have to first engage the first midfielder who has come to press him, hold him off either with some strength, or move the ball to keep it out of reach and only then play the pass. All of which he cannot do.
So I don’t see how Ten Hag changes that incident for example. It’s not the first time Bruno has played passes like that. The one that led to Watford’s penalty was the same. And there would have been others that were successfully completed. More to the point is the reason for playing such passes, and to me, it’s down to a fear and inability of having to take the ball under any sort of pressure and keep it. This is not a coaching issue, and to me, it’s clear as day. He’s not an idiot. Of course his problems this season can’t be fixed by a coach just telling him ‘don’t be so wasteful with the ball Bruno’, as if it’s that simple. He’s not a good midfielder, he can’t do the basics of a 90 minute midfield shift, he can do the highlights of a 90 min midfield shift. But the boring regular churn of getting the ball over and over, turning away from players, holding off players, retaining possession etc - he cannot do. He’s 27 and never shown himself capable to do it, and Ten Hag will be able to do nothing about that. Given space, or given a run he can hit first time - the man is capable of things nobody else in our current squad is. However, any action he cannot complete in the first two or three seconds is usually done at a low standard (or ends with him on the floor), and the successful actions he, or any other player, can complete within the first two seconds will always have a low probability.
He won’t be sold this summer, for a number of reasons, but he should be. This is not knee-jerk, he’s simply not a good enough footballer for a team that wants to play a high level of football, and I couldn’t care less what the calculator says - ultimately, we end up falling short anyway. If we are going to become a team on the level of the other two, there is no place for him. Palace were just roughing him up and taking the ball from him easily yesterday, and that will increase the more opponents stop looking at him with any fear and respect. He’s been propped up as some world-class player but he really isn’t. People love a hero and saviour in English football, and Sky went way overboard in his early days and were bewitched by numbers instead of watching actual games. For example, during his early months, pundits were constantly making comparisons to ‘another #18 who used to wear that shirt’, when he is nothing like Paul Scholes in either style or quality. Commentators also described a loose pass as him as some sort of rarity every single game when it was anything but. This whole ‘carrying the team’ narrative was born at the same time, but this time of reckoning was always going to come, because once the tabloid-style analysis stopped people would start seeing what was actually happening out there.
