It boggles my mind how can people think we can play 3 man midfield with Fred as DM plus Pogba and Bruno.
Firstly, Fred is NOT a DM, not only he is weak physically, but also has no passing range. Moreover, his best attribute (defensively) is to chase players like a maddog, which is exactly the thing you DON'T do as a defensive midfielder. It literally makes no sense to play him in that role. No, he CAN'T do the job there. We will get waltzed through by any team, Varane or no Varane. I remember only one game when we played Fred in that role (vs Arsenal) and it didn't work at all. He saw a lot of the ball because they let him have it, what is he going to do with it anyway?
Secondly, Bruno is one of the worst players defensively in our squad. He can run a lot but he's no help in midfield, my grandma could dribble past him.
The ONLY player who would benefit from that formation is the one we're selling soon.
Even if we can get a DM (I don't think we will get one and I think Pogba is gone but let's leave it), a team of:
DM
Bruno Pogba
Is not better than
DM
Fred
Bruno
And you can still play the same number of forwards in both cases. We need to consider we already have 3 attackers who don't do much work off the ball, meaning we need conservative midfield to balance it out. We also allow our fullbacks to join the attack and hold width, so we really are top heavy team.
For sure we can improve on McTominay and Fred, but buying someone like Grealish to play him in midfield would be a disaster.
The thing we could do is switch to 4-3-3 with DM, and play Bruno as part of front 3, and I'd be interested to see that:
DM
CM - - - - Fred
Bruno
Cavani/Greenwood - - Rashford/Sancho
Diamond or Bruno as false 9, whatever we name it, let's just not pretend he is a midfielder. I like him up top though.
I don't know who plays the CM role though. Maybe van de Beek if we can find a player in him.