As I said in another thread, I've been critical of Fred lately but don't see what he's being criticized for tonight. Other than one poor free kick he gave away in a dangerous position (and one poor decision to shoot), what's he supposed to do? We could have had Pogba, Scholes or Xavi in the midfield tonight and they wouldn't have been able to create anything with the level of movement and ball control that our attackers were showing. Both Rashford and Greenwood were put into 1v1 situations multiple times (sometimes by Fred, sometimes by others). Rashford gave the ball away EVERY single time, and Greenwood just turned back inside EVERY single time and passed it back to the midfield. Greenwood never attempted to run in behind, Rashford barely did. It doesn't matter who was in midfield tonight, they wouldn't have been creating chances when there isn't anybody to create chances for.
Fred, along with perhaps Bruno, was the only one in the team trying to actually speed up the tempo and get the ball moving fast enough to pull Palace out of position. The only times he gave it away was when he was trying to play attacking passes to create something, which makes him an improvement over everyone else in the front six who were not only giving away attacking passes but also easy basic passes. Of course I'm not saying he was great (or even good), but he was the best of our front six players.