It comes down once again to that term "football intelligence". Bruno isn't on the same level in terms of dribbling - but how comes Bruno constantly wins niggly free kicks in decent areas, whereas ASM doesn't and ends up on the floor, flapping his arms as the opposition counter? Bruno can draw a foul from one player on him, ASM has three around him and just loses the ball. Almost every time.
Then it's the decision making - he bombs forward and can frequently get past the first player. Instead of then making a good decision - a whipped cross, a shot, a forward pass - he has a brainfart and either tries to take on everyone, or simply turns around and inevitably passes to the wrong player 20 yards further back. Howe has clearly been working on possession retention. But we're in a funny middle period now where ASM is going past someone, then remembers what Eddie told him, so he turns around and sprints 20 yards the other way to try and pass to someone on his team. It tells me that he lacks football intelligence, quite severely in fact. Look at the running yesterday from the likes of Sterling or Grealish, they're miles ahead and both can do the odd dribble.
Bottom line is he's a talented lad but the comparison to HBA is definitely on the money. Selfishness, bad decisions, relying so much on confidence or "love". The difference to Ginola or Robert is that they would know when to ping in a cross, or calm down the play, draw the fouls, etc. Basically, both HBA and ASM play at 100 mph and as a result thought doesn't go into it, it's just making it up on the spot and so much tends to go wrong. He's not thinking "beat a man, then whip it into the box" or "get control and draw the foul". I don't think you can actually coach this, either. If you try and coach it, tends to create confusion.
Robert was a class player in comparison
