I really rate Bruno. Yes, he is sometimes too cavalier in his passing, he’s a bit of a shit, and mouthy. But he wants to win, and we need that. However, he is best played through the middle, and I’ll tell you why.
1. Bruno’s brilliance is his quick, defense splitting passing into space and his runs into the box. That’s what makes him special when he’s on form. On the wing, he’s too far forward to play those balls, and also, you’ve taken half the field away from him, so his options are limited. Also, he’s best arriving a bit behind the wingers when on the counter. We’ve seen this time and again over the last 3 seasons.
2. He’s a pretty sloppy defender. He tracks back okay, but he’s pretty low energy when closing down and providing support for the RB. You can hide these attributes when defending central because you are more or less defending space with a lot of help defenders On the wings you are defending players more than space and there isn’t a lot of help defenders. He does tend to poke at the ball, dive in, etc, which, again, is fine in the center but will cause a lot of problems on the wing.
3. He is excellent at roaming side to side and helping support wing play. Of all of our central midfielders, he is the best at this. Eriksen is damn good too, but typically supports the left and is usually deeper. When you play Bruno on the wing, the patterns of play become disjointed, there isn’t enough forward support. Donny is so objectively bad, no, wait, useless, in supporting wing play and the drop off is so brutal that you might as well play Shoretire in that 10 role. At least he’ll get some first team minutes and we can actually develop the assets instead of DvB shitting the bed.
I’m sure Ten Hag knows all of this, but must have had his reasons for playing him there. The first two PL matches aside, this is the first match recently where I’ve seriously questioned Ten Hag’s first 11, tactics and subs. I give him a 3 out of 10 for this match. Overall, he’s still been very good, totally support him, but he got this match wrong.