Erik ten haag
Bruno Fernandes was not the only Manchester United player suffering in the August heat and bristling at an unplanned run less than 24 hours after the generational nadir of Brentford.
Bruno Fernandes said “Why do we have to do it like this? When a manager does the punishment – because that’s what you have to call it, it was a punishment, Obviously it makes us feel he knows he was part of that bad result and he wants to make us understand we are together on this in a good way, in a bad way, in the good moments and in the bad moments. All of a sudden, you look backwards and you see your manager running with you. I don’t know exactly what the distance was but it was a big distance.”
Fernandes is holding court in a spartan and windowless room squirreled away in the upper floor of the main building at United’s Carrington training complex. He is in his training kit, ready for a penultimate session before the 189th Manchester derby. A fluent English speaker, Fernandes is one of the most engaging players in United’s recent history. Every question merits a prolonged answer, teeming with context and candour.
United’s also-ran status last season was cause for contemplation. Fernandes signed a renewal on April 1, the expiration date extended by only a year. The suspicion was he had merely obtained a salary hike at a dubious time. United would lose five of their next nine games after Fernandes’s conversations with football director John Murtough and technical director Darren Fletcher.
Bruno Fernandes said “So for me playing for the club, as I always said, it’s such an honour and a dream come true,” Fernandes stresses. “But obviously I came to the club and my aim is winning trophies because I know how big this club is and I know how big we can still be and achieve good things and big things. So I had a conversation last year with the club when everyone knew that Ralf (Rangnick) was not the coach for the future. And when the club decided [who the manager would be] I spoke to the club and I said I want to be a solution for the club, I want to be helpful for the club, but I also want to know where we are going. Is here a plan, is here a future? This was before I signed my new contract because I said to the club, obviously money is important, no one can hide that, it’s always important to earn more and more and more in football or life. Whatever job you do, you always want to have the best for yourself. But at that time, for me I said I’m on good money, I don’t want a new contract without knowing that we have a good future in the club. I want to know where we are going. I don’t need to know who the manager is, but I want to know just as a club, do you think we have a future? Do you have a plan for the future? What are your thoughts on where we can go? What does the club want? Does the club want to achieve trophies or does the club want to build something to go to the Champions League? Because for me, that’s not enough. The club demands more, the history of this club, the quality of the players we have, it demands more than just being here and fighting for fourth place. It demands trophies, it demands at least fighting for trophies. We don’t have to win all the trophies but we have to fight for the trophies and as a club and the quality of players, we have the quality to do that and we’ve been showing that, so I just want to know if this is the future. And the club has said they have a plan, this is what they want, we agree with you that the level of the club has to be better than it has been in the past, we can achieve much more, we can do much more. And that’s why I have never had my head out of here but just making sure the club is still in the same direction that it was when I signed.”
Ten Hag was bound to relish coaching a footballer with as driven a mentality as Fernandes. Ten Hag is not as much of a hugger as Jurgen Klopp or as conscious of cameras as Pep Guardiola but he is prone to embracing Fernandes, one of his on-pitch lieutenants. Th first time Fernandes captained United this season was in the pivotal victory over Liverpool. What Fernandes found more telling than the punitive running session was United’s next training date two days later.
Bruno Fernandes said “We came to training and you could see how intense everyone was, how angry everyone was, how you felt everyone wants to give a response in the next game,” he says. “Even knowing it was Liverpool, it was a big game, it was a tough game, for the moment at that time, your head was a bit like, ‘is this the right moment to play Liverpool?’ It will be more difficult than normally it is already. But I think everyone also felt that there is no better game to give a response than playing Liverpool at home because we know, as with Man City, what it means for the fans playing against Liverpool, beating Liverpool, how big this game is. I think everyone felt we have to do a turnaround in our season because this is not enough, what we have been doing, and this is probably the game to do it. I think it was the turnaround until now.”
Fernandes’s first Manchester derby was the last United played in a packed Old Trafford before the Covid-19 pandemic swept across Europe. One-nil up in added time, a cacophony of whistles turning to the most jubilant cheers when Scott McTominay’s caressed curler sent the ball into the Stretford End net in the 96th minute. The roar was so deafening the old tunnel between the dugouts – the only surviving relic from before the Second World War – was in danger of crumbling. Just as memorable is Fernandes’s terse exchange with Guardiola that he ended by pressing his finger against his lips. “We had a little bit of, not a conversation there, but some shouts at each other, and that was what I felt at the moment.
Bruno Fernandes said “I go sometimes over the line. I don’t think that was over the line because in the moment of the game I don’t think I was disrespectful, because I think I didn’t like what he said to me. He didn’t like that I did that to him probably. But it’s part of the game, I have nothing against anyone. I have respect for everyone in the game: managers, players, referees even! Even I go over the line. It’s the way I feel sometimes alive during the game, it’s not being disrespectful to referees but it’s my passion for the game that makes myself go over the line. But obviously sometimes after the games when I feel I have gone a little bit too much I go to the referees and I apologise myself for something I have done wrong. Sometimes I don’t do it probably because we lost a game, or I saw some choices for that that I didn’t like! But normally I try to be respectful for everyone.”
Fernandes feels perceptions of his argumentative nature have altered. “The way I am is I am a person who is vocal on the pitch, sometimes you can [go] over the line. But I think everyone in the dressing room knows this is the way I am, the way I try to push everyone and try to push also myself.
Bruno Fernandes said “I feel myself alive into the game. That hasn’t changed since I arrived even from the first day on I am the way I am now. And I have always been vocal and I put my arms up sometimes, all that kind of stuff. In the beginning, for everyone – even outside the club – it was really pretty, it was like me taking the responsibility. Now it is not the same, people want to put it in a different way, in a way they want. But I am quite okay with that because it is the way I am. When my teammates feel that, ‘Bruno, we don’t like that, we don’t want you to be like that, I don’t want you to be like that with me, you can do it with the other ones’, if anyone tells that to me I will be okay with that because I have to respect each of them. But even knowing that if I feel at any moment I need to push someone and I need to call someone for a reason then I will do it.”
Fernandes bought into Ten Hag’s disciplinarian methods during pre-season and publicly supported the punishment meted out to Alejandro Garnacho for his tardiness. Marcus Rashford’s demotion at Wolves was more of a jolt than his alarm clock.
Bruno Fernandes said “Since the club signed the manager they have put a direction to the club that this is the rules we want to follow: this is the direction, this is how it will be for the next couple of years hopefully and he’s been really good for us. The discipline the manager brought to the club, to everyone, has changed the mentality of the entire club, not even only the players. It is good for everyone to understand that you can’t go over the line, you have to follow the rules of the team, you have to follow the rules of the manager. Obviously for us at that moment Marcus was already in good form. When everyone noticed that the manager was changing his first eleven because Marcus was late, at the same moment everyone felt like ‘we have to be here on time, that is the responsibility that we have’. We have to do what the manager wants and that is not what the manager wants. That is the rule: being on time for training, for meetings for whatever it is, we have to be always on time. That is a good thing because for the ones that don’t play they feel like ‘okay, if the ones who are playing are not doing the best they can they will be pulled out the team. “That shows the manager gives the same respect to the ones who are playing, to those who are more important, less important, scoring more goals, fewer goals, saving goals. That is a mark the manager made already in the past with other players but was not in the news. It is a good sign of passing responsibility to the player. Obviously, Marcus did really well because he knew he was wrong. It is obviously difficult to accept sometimes, but he accepted it, came on and decided the game for us. That is what this team is about now, it is about responsibility and being there for everyone.”
United have lost one of their 18 games since they were pummeled by City on October 2 and have won eight consecutive games for the first time since January 2019. City have been held by Everton and beaten by Southampton in the last fortnight. City have lost only three times at Old Trafford in almost 12 years but Guardiola predicted in October “United is coming back”. Fernandes believes United have shed an inferiority complex that was all too visible in certain matches under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Bruno Fernandes said “Now probably you can see a team that has a way to play that convinces the fans, convinces the players it is the right one and the one that can win games,” Fernandes declares. “You go to every game and the feeling I have now is that we are not afraid to play against anyone. In the past you could not see that. Obviously, the fans believe and trust but you could feel also that when the toughest games were coming there was a little bit of ‘can we do it or not?’ But now if you look at the fans, the players, the structure, everyone, you feel that we can play face-to-face with everyone at this moment. This is something I have and we have to believe so that game by game we can achieve great results.”
United are doing all the running.
