Rangnick: Why 4-3-3 suits our midfielders

“I think for both players, this gives them, how shall I say, more opportunity and more freedom to play that kind of football where they’re good at – both offensively and defensively,” he added. “Fred is also a player who is probably one of our best ball-winners.

“On the other hand, we’ve all seen in the last two games, how good and how important Bruno can be in possession of the ball and also defensively; he’s always working hard. He ran more than 12k [kilometres] per game, with the highest distance in the whole game.

“At the same time, on the ball, he is somebody who can score goals himself but also be, how shall I say it, altruistic enough to see a better-placed player, as he did twice at Brentford: when he played the ball square to the better-positioned team-mates, in the first instance for Mason and then, before the third goal, when he played the ball to Marcus.”