Fernandes the conductor already proving a big hit at Man Utd
If Paul Pogba ends up leaving Old Trafford in the coming months, Manchester United already has the midfield entertainer in place to spearhead a rebuild.
Bruno Fernandes has only been at United a matter of weeks following his protracted move from Sporting Lisbon, but he is delivering the kind of wizardry and impudence from the playmaker role that United fans have been crying out for.
The latest evidence came in a 3-0 win over Watford in the Premier League on Sunday when all of Fernandes’ qualities were on show.
The way he sauntered up to a penalty kick, produced a little skip, and cheekily rolled his effort into the net spoke a lot about the confidence Fernandes already has.
He followed up that first goal for United with his second assist, setting up Mason Greenwood for the clinching third at Old Trafford. In between, it was Fernandes who sent through a precision throughball that Anthony Martial latched onto before eventually scoring at the second attempt with a clever bit of play of his own.
That’s the thing about players like Fernandes: their quality quickly has an effect on others.
Indeed, United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer hailed the transformative impact Fernandes is having, all while Pogba - the club’s record signing - is out of the team, recovering from injury but also clearly unsettled.
“Very excited by having him in,” Solskjaer said of Fernandes. “He has come in, given everyone a boost, and wants to conduct a game.”
Solskjaer said Fernandes was a mix between Paul Scholes and Juan Sebastian Veron - two silky, creative former United midfielders.
“It means more than just getting a player in,” he said. “You can see the supporters, they’re used to players with that personality, mentality and quality.”
Fernandes himself is talking about being at United to “conquer” the Premier League, which it hasn’t done since 2013 - its last year under long-time manager Alex Ferguson.
That obviously won’t happen this season with United 35 points behind runaway leader Liverpool, which is on the verge of winning the English championship for the first time in 30 years and trimming the gap to United in overall league titles to one at 20-19.
But the future at least looks a lot brighter for United, which honored one of its past greats before the game in a minute’s silence for Harry Gregg, a survivor of the 1958 air disaster in Munich who died recently.
With this latest win, Solskjaer’s team jumped above Tottenham and Sheffield United into fifth place, which is currently a Champions League qualification position following UEFA’s imposition of a twoseason ban from European competitions on second-place Manchester City for serious breaches of financial regulations.
United isn’t short of challengers for those final qualifying spots, though.