Bruno Fernandes is having an incredible season for Man Utd, but he felt the club wanted to sell him last summer and his future will be the subject of focus again this year.
Bruno Fernandes
Bruno Fernandes will considering his future this summer, but United have made it clear what they want to happen
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Where would Manchester United be without Bruno Fernandes? It is a commonly asked question, but one that feels a little more relevant this season, given the club captain's performances and how close he came to leaving last summer.
Fernandes has 16 Premier League assists to his name so far and needs four in the final seven games to match the record held jointly by Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne. He is in contention to win various player of the year awards, but had things worked out a little differently after last season's Europa League final, he could be doing all of this in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Hilal were ready to make United an offer of around £100million last summer, as well as pay Fernandes a reported £700,000-a-week salary. After a couple of weeks of deliberations, Fernandes decided to turn the payday down and stick around at Old Trafford, but something about the experience stuck in his craw.
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Fernandes said in an interview in Portugal in December that the club "wanted me to leave", an assessment not disputed by everyone at Old Trafford. United had finished 15th in the Premier League, lost the Europa League final and needed a significant rebuild. There was a view that that sort of money for a player moving into his 30s could be transformational.
Fernandes consulted with his family and decided to stay, and this is the campaign in which it feels like his status as a club legend has been cemented. If he went into last summer uncertain what his employers were thinking, he is in no doubt this time around.
In recent weeks, Fernandes has been told by United's football leadership that they want him to stay, and that point has been made very clear to the Portugal international. There can be no second-guessing this year.
That doesn't mean that is the end of the story. Fernandes has a release clause of around £57million in his contract, which is only available to clubs from overseas. He is expected to assess his next move this summer and wants to decide his future after the World Cup.
United will likely want an indication from their captain before the tournament. Losing him would mean a significant shift in transfer strategy and the difficult task of replacing the Premier League's best attacking midfielder.
Sources at Old Trafford believe showing Fernandes that the club is heading in the right direction will help convince him that his future lies there. The direction of travel has been positive recently, with Fernandes at the heart of a stunning renaissance under Michael Carrick that has United on course to return to the Champions League.
That is the stage on which Fernandes is desperate to play, and where he deserves to be playing. In his six-and-a-half-year United career, he has played just 19 Champions League matches, and only two in the knockout stages. He has just an FA Cup and a League Cup to show for his sterling service.
Paris St-Germain tried to sign Fernandes in the summer of 2024, and it might be that some of Europe's elite come calling again, especially now they know the fees involved in making a deal work. But he turns 32 in September and £57million is a big fee for a player at that age, no matter how good his most recent season was. There will be no resale value.
Having committed so much of his career to a club he has fallen in love with, there is a feeling that winning one major trophy at United would be worth more than racking up an easy Ligue 1 haul with PSG or Bundesliga titles with Bayern Munich. The question might be whether United can show Fernandes that they are making the progress required to challenge for the Premier League sooner rather than later.
For the third summer in a row, Fernandes' future will come into sharp focus over the next few months. This time, he knows exactly where United stand. It is now United waiting on Fernandes to see how this pans out.