It was a standard McTominay performance, misplaced passes and terrible on the ball as usual, plenty of aggression to break-up play, good late runs into the box, and so on and so forth.
He played as I expected he would.
I agree, but I'd say it was an
extreme version of a
standard McTominay performance. Diabolical decision making and execution on the ball 25-30% of the time, quite good off the ball, looked too big and quick for a quality Championship midfield.
He's normally not quite this good off the ball or quite this terrible on it, but against Burnley he was his truest self.
Perfect example of why we should sell him to another Prem table, as he has value as a homegrown player with experience, size, mobility and not too old for a CM. Then buy a big, strong, fast midfielder who can play as a 6 or 8 but is better technically. You're not going to get a genius, but you can get a solid player. Rabiot is basically the type of player we're talking about here. Capoue, Thomas Delaney and Berge are similar archetypes. Someone who can win headers when Casemiro is hurt and Lisandro needs someone in front of him to do that like he had in Edson Alvarez. But capable of striding forward a bit and linking play well. Not an impossible task to find as shown by those players moving multiple times to not huge clubs most of the time.
Searching around on FBRef, we're talking about someone like Pogeba at Milan, Stach at Mainz or Endo (short but is 29, wins everything in the air and captain for Stuttgart and anchor for the Japanese team so a guy who could play 20-25 games a year at United and not lose his place for country and not cost an insane amount)
Basically, McTominay is quite similar to Casemiro, so he fits the squad, but we need someone who is a Europa League level Casemiro, and McTominay is more of a finish 13th in the Prem and survive solidly, but not make it to the Europa Conference League type of player.