Agree neither are true CDM's in the same way, neither is Pogs. I actually don't think Ole wants one. I think he's happy with McFred and most of the talk has been from fans and the media about needing one. Must admit, if you are Ole, you can see why. Generally the biggest games since he's been here against the top teams in the league and in Europe, they have rarely let him down. They might be limited but our record against Liverpool, City and Chelsea has been good with them in it. Winning the first 3 games in CL and getting to the final of the Europa, where they have pretty much played in all those games, can hardly be seen as their failure? Might be me.....
I think you're right. Ole does seem to be happy with both of them. He plays them in every big game. He's certainty not in a hurry to replace them like a lot of the fans are. If he was, it would have been a priority this summer. I feel like the only midfielder we've had any legit links to is Camvinga. He looks like another #8.
I am more a fan of Fred than McTominay, but I'm going to begin respecting them both a lot more. I complain about them starting in almost every match they start together, but we seem to win more often than not with them. We at least finished 2nd with them. Our failure to go further can't be only placed on both of their shoulders. We have 4 players ahead of them that are tasked with winning us games, and they didn't always manage to do it.
Fred is an excellent player. It always feels like he can have 8 good games to every 1 poor one but as soon as he slips or has some poor moments the usual detractors come out or meaningless generalisations such as "not winning a league with Fred" arise. He's been consistently good for a couple of years now! We have to get everything right to win a league, that's the truth of it, the evidence suggests Fred can play the part.
He's our perfect third man in midfield. He's not your purely defensive man, and it certainly helps if you have those with a killer pass alongside him. But in terms of short passing, harrying, intercepting, energy, his statistics are top level. It's absolutely key to Oles ideas surrounding quick, dynamic attacking play exploiting our forward types.
I feel a lot more confident when he's on the team sheet as I know we'll get a number of dangerous breaks every game from the work he does.
The main issue is when Fred makes mistakes, it usually results in us conceding. I think the same thing happens with Pogba. When either of them lose the ball in front of our box, the opposition tends to always punish us. They rarely get away with making a mistake.
Still, I think Fred has been decent enough over the past couple years. Many people say he can't pass, but the stats completely disagree with that. His stats show he is a better player than many of our fans say.
If he had an actual #6 behind him, I think he'd look even better. If he was tasked with doing the things he's very good at, and another player was tasked with sitting more and taking the ball off of the CB's, he'd get more respect.
17
