Strange, he protects the ball better than all of our midfielders.
How does he cover the ball that much better? how many more fouls he drew than our other midfielders, how many more dribbles has he recorded? He's more a one touch player than someone who would take the responsibility and turn to create a chance. I like him because he's a very good system player who likes to play quick football and those we need too but some people here had absolutely unrealistic expectations of him coming here - the new signing syndrom, we've been here, hell even calling him our Pogba replacement who is totally different player..
I think eventually Donny will replace Scott in the packing order and will play alongside Fred, rather deeper in midfield as a b2b. Similar to more talented Herrera who was also more of no 10 in Bilbao but requirements at top clubs are higher so he ahd to go deeper and learn more how to defend...
Will play 25-30 games per season, perhaps in a diamond with one more midfielder to cover, think he's similar to Daley Blind, that he's perfectly drilled player with a bit different attributes though and slightly higher ceiling.
But very solid bench option when we stack up with more talented players like Grealish there, who has good attributes to change the tempo of the game a bit and get us results in certain games. Should easily get a lot of minutes from both Mata & Lingard, perhaps Pogba and McTominay. But unlike Scott he will be the bench player just about not good enough to start and Scott more just about good enough to be a squad player.
Time will tell though. He's got good mentality, and those player who work so hard can often overachieve in terms of their potential.