One-touch passes are hard. As the great Johan Cruyff once said, “Technique is passing the ball with one touch, with the right speed, at the right foot of your team-mate.”

The truth is first-time passes are dying out, with Premier League sides increasingly prioritising controlled possession. Manchester United playmaker Bruno Fernandes, though, has never been one to follow convention.

His one-touch, no-look assist in last season’s FA Cup final win against Manchester City would surely have earned Cruyff’s seal of approval.

From the edge of the box, Fernandes slid a first-time ball between John Stones and a recovering Kyle Walker, teeing up Kobbie Mainoo for the side-footed finish, as United ran out 2-1 winners, denying City a second successive league-and-cup double.

YOU COULDN’T WRITE IT 🤯

Academy graduate, Kobbie Mainoo scores in the #EmiratesFACup Final for @ManUtd 😱 pic.twitter.com/d68cAKvaE8

— Emirates FA Cup (@EmiratesFACup) May 25, 2024

It was a perfect example of why first-time passes can be so devastating — playing the ball a fraction of a second earlier can expose disorganised defences before they have time to react. It’s likely that if Fernandes had taken a touch to set himself first, the famously pacy Walker might have shut down the pass to Mainoo, and the chance would have been lost.

Yet across the Premier League, players are usually taking that extra touch.

Modern coaches place more of an emphasis on methodical ball retention — average sequence time is up for a fourth successive Premier League season. The game is slowing down, with possession valued over spontaneity. According to data company SkillCorner, one-touch passes have made up just 21.3 per cent of those played in open play this season (going into this weekend’s round of matches) — the lowest figure recorded since their records began in 2018-19.

Fernandes is bucking the trend. This season, 34.8 per cent of his passes have been one-touch — up nearly five percentage points from 2019-20, when the Portugal international joined United from Sporting CP of Lisbon.

His above-average one-touch passing rate highlights his role as United’s chief creative force, constantly looking to move the ball quickly and create openings. Their previous manager Erik ten Hag called him “a genius at giving that final pass”, though the Dutchman recognised that it is not easy to do. “It demands a lot,” he added. “Firstly, intelligence. But also personality when it goes wrong several times and you keep trying to do it.”

It takes a strong mentality to continue eschewing the easy option and try to pull off the harder pass.

One-touch passing isn’t necessarily a marker of innate quality, though.

Heading into the weekend, Fernandes led the Premier League with 470 first-time passes this season, but it would take a headstrong (and objectively wrong) person to infer that, because Southampton centre-back Jan Bednarek has played the fifth-most one-touch passes, he is also the division’s fifth-best creative force.

Many of these players aren’t trying to thread eye-of-the-needle passes through packed defences — they’re tasked with circulating possession quickly in build-up, simply keeping the ball moving rather than attempting to unlock opposition back lines.

Indeed, it’s rare for an attacking player to dominate this field.

Since 2018-19 Jorginho, Oliver Norwood, James Ward-Prowse, Pascal Gross and Rodri (twice) have topped this metric come the season’s end. It’s not until we filter for first-time passes in the final third that the more traditional playmaker emerges. In the last six seasons, Fernandes (twice), Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden, Eden Hazard and Trent Alexander-Arnold have all topped the table for most one-touch balls in that area of the pitch.

(Carl Recine/Getty Images)

So why is Fernandes leading in a metric typically dominated by deeper midfielders? Because he’s playing first-time passes from everywhere.

The graph below shows that Fernandes isn’t just dominant in the attacking third — he’s also the most frequent first-time passer in — objectively riskier — central midfield areas.

Another key factor is Fernandes’ increasingly deeper role for United in recent seasons.

When he joined under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer midway through that 2019-20 campaign, he was primarily used as a No 10, with 46 per cent of his first-time passes occurring in the final third. After Ten Hag took charge in summer 2022, his responsibilities shifted, as he was played in deeper areas. Ten Hag, faced with a midfield injury crisis, even utilised Fernandes’ as a deep-lying playmaker in a 2-0 home victory against Everton in April 2023. That Fernandes was voted player of the match that day speaks volumes about his versatility.

Now, with Ten Hag’s replacement Ruben Amorim as the coach, he’s operating deeper again. Just 28 per cent of his one-touch passes under Amorim have come in the attacking third — the lowest rate of his United career.

This shift is deliberate. Amorim wants his captain closer to the action, saying after his first match in charge against Ipswich Town in November — a 1-1 away draw — that Fernandes “improved his game by playing near the ball”.

It begs the question whether Fernandes will have to adapt his style if he continues playing deeper for his countryman. Control is central to Amorim’s philosophy — he has said: “You have to control the ball and the tempo of the game.”

United are more methodical in possession when playing Amorim’s 3-4-2-1 formation. Since he was appointed, only Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City have recorded a lower direct speed — a measure of how quickly teams advance the ball upfield — than United. This highlights their manager’s preference for patient build-up rather than rapid transitions.

Maintaining possession is critical to this style, and risky one-touch passing can make that more difficult.

As the graph below shows, pass completion rates for one-touch passes are lower across almost all areas of the pitch compared to other open-play passes. This aligns with Cruyff’s statement that redirecting a fast-moving ball accurately to a team-mate first time is inherently more difficult than playing a controlled pass after taking a touch.

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That presents a dilemma for United and Amorim — do they ask their best player to cut down on the very actions that make him their best player?

If Fernandes’ shift into deeper midfield becomes a permanent fixture of this coaching regime, losing possession in those areas carries greater risk. But if he is discouraged from attempting first-time, defence-splitting passes, does that dull his creative instincts?

United might be especially cautious if it means fewer first-time passes in the final third.

One-touch passing is particularly valuable around the opposition penalty area, as shown by SkillCorner’s expected threat (xT) model.

The xT metric measures the probability that a completed pass leads to a goal within the next 10 seconds. The graphic below shows the increase or decrease in this probability if a player elects to pass first-time instead of after taking a touch — showing the advantage of moving the ball quickly in advanced parts of the pitch.

Playing incisive first-time passes around the 18-yard box will remain an invaluable string in Fernandes’ bow. Yet, with the United captain turning 31 early next season, it’s likely he will continue operating in deeper areas of the pitch. But dictating a game from back there requires more than just creativity; setting the right tempo requires heightened game awareness and intelligence.

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Knowing when to break lines with a penetrating pass and when to calmly circulate possession to relieve pressure is fundamental to the role.

Controlling the frequency and location of his first-time passing will help Fernandes strike that balance, and continue to make him one of the most unique players in the Premier League.

(Top photo: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)