Raging captain Bruno Fernandes’s standout shocker in United nightmare
As Liverpool’s players celebrated scoring their seventh goal without reply last night, an overenthused and possibly refreshed pitch-invader sprinted across the Anfield turf to join the gleeful throng, only to slip and take out Andy Robertson with an accidental two-footed lunge. With just two minutes of normal time remaining, it was closer than anyone in a Manchester United shirt had got to the Liverpool full-back at any point during the game. While United winger Antony has since been singled out for his almost heroic lack of enthusiasm when it came to keeping tabs on the Scotsman, there was plenty of blame to go round for Manchester United’s worst defeat since 1931.
While the team as a whole had a comical collective second-half nightmare in the face of a Liverpool onslaught reminiscent of a year ago when they were still good, Antony, Fred, Casemiro,
Lisandro Martínez and Luke Shaw were all conspicuously awful, but the standout shocker was that of Bruno Fernandes. When he wasn’t busy losing the ball, United’s on-field captain was waving his arms like an orchestra conductor on amphetamines, raging at his own, the referee’s and everyone else’s ineptitude. In a show of petulance that would see most toddlers receive a lengthy ban from their local indoor soft play, the Portuguese midfielder also shoved a fourth official, threw himself to the ground feigning injury, took a dive in an effort to win a penalty and remonstrated with his own manager for not substituting him, all the better to leave him to endure a humiliation that was largely of his own making.
Today, presumably with United’s social media team having studied the infamous, widely derided “fan sentiment graphs”, the apologies duly started popping up on various Social Media Disgrace. “I wish we could play a game today to try and put things right,” wrote Marcus Rashford. “The result is the result, and we can’t see past that! We must not let it define our season. We have to trust the process and stick together.” David de Gea also piped up, announcing “I know these messages don’t sit well on such a day”, apparently oblivious to the fact that he or his people were posting one anyway. At the time of writing, Bruno had yet to comment.
For TV viewers in the UK, Manchester United’s capitulation was simply the precursor to an even more amusing main event, in which the Sky Sports presenter Kelly Cates expertly refereed a post-match bunfight featuring the insufferably smug punditry duo of Graeme Souness and Jamie Carragher lording it over Gary Neville and Roy Keane. “Look at you gloating like little children,” said Neville to the former Liverpool players, having unconvincingly denied saying off-air that Liverpool hadn’t been particularly impressive. “Liverpool, sharp off the tee at Anfield this afternoon,” said Cates as she closed the show. “They’ve beaten Manchester United by seven goals to nil, it’s a record for this fixture, Mo Salah is now Liverpool’s record Premier League goalscorer and they didn’t even play that well.” Boom!
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Unacceptable, embarrassing, to be honest. I think out there on the pitch I felt embarrassed for us players, for the fans that were there supporting us, that were watching at home, to watch that
second half. I can only apologise for that and us as players have to own it … We showed no personality, no mentality and for a big team to come here we need to be better” – Luke Shaw joins in with the apologies after Manchester United’s biggest Anfield capitulation.
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