I'm guessing you don't pay much attention to McTominay. He's far worse and constantly just stands or slowly jogs along behind opposition players so it's pretty much impossible to pass him the ball. That, along with his actual passing ability, are the two things that need to massively improve if he's going to become a fixture in our midfield going forward. That's the reason he constantly gets on the ball and passes the ball about 20% less than all our other midfielders.
It's actually a strange criticism of Fred as that's one thing that I thought most would agree would be a strength. He's constantly running around into space trying to offer himself as an option to pass to. It's the main reason I thought Fred and VDB actually combined quite well the couple of times they've played together - Fred is the only other midfielder we have who looked to play the quick 1-2's and make the short pass and move that VDB tends to look for.