Bruno used to drop back a lot for Sporting, he was their main man winning the ball back, closing people down and would end up having more longer range shots. He was playing like a high scoring Herrera but he's evolved to be more advance behind the striker here and has been very effective as well. I think Bruno can just be a bit more disciplined like he was against Atalanta away, he came on and was a little deeper and played many accurate passes in the middle. Against Villa he's pushing so far up I found it incredible with the lack of control we had in that game he wasn't asked to sit deeper, we got dominated by them and after all that's gone on in the past weeks plus losing to a dominant Wolves at OT.
We need a 3 man midfield with either Bruno sitting deeper or perhaps giving him a free role higher up in some games and bringing in Donny to help out. Donny was very good at Ajax helping out the midfield but he's not a main man midfielder in a two, more just helping out pressing and closing people down while passing quickly, a bit like Fred for Shakhtar. We have too many attacking or supportive midfielders.
One of Donny's best games for us was at home to Leipzig where we won 5-0, he was excellent doing a lot of covering, quick one touch passes to beat their press, the other players started to follow suit. For 10-15 mins they had us pinned back and we struggled until Donny really took control and lead by example, it's a shame he hasn't been more utilized and has been pretty much dropped since then. He couldn't even get a start in the away game with players missing and we went 2-0 down in the opening minutes. They exposed AWB, the plan they wanted to do at the home game.