just on this, Lo Celso played mostly as an 8 in a cm3 at PSG in 17/18 and that was really his best position, he was shoved into playing as a 6 because of PSG’s injury crisis - and he did an OK job. e also plays as an 8/Cm for Argentina.
He isn’t a DM at all, but I think I’d trust him more in a Cm2 than I would normally Eriksen for example. (Although Eriksen was excellent yesterday). But you’d want a proper 6 in there with him.
We keep coming back to the same issue. We have two or three potential top level 8’s who would be much better played in CM3’s which would make the job of the central 6/dm so much easier and simplified, but we have had two managers now that keep trying to shoehorn I’ll-equipped players into even more demanding double pivots - asking players that aren’t great at football (Sissoko, Dier) to transition the ball and/or players that are good/better at transitioning the ball (Ndomble, Winks, Eriksen) to be DM’s or hybrid double pivots.
If we played a 433, it would ask less of Dier or even Skipp, and get the best out of players like Ndomble, Lo Celso, Winks, Eriksen.
I think we can get by with. CM2 without a DM - but only if both of the CM2 are comfortable in both attack and defence, think Mason/Bentaleb in Poch first season as being an obvious example.
But still interesting that PSG were happy to loan out after one season with a low buy out clause.