He loves to shoot. He creates chances better than any other. He’s the attacking heartbeat of one of the biggest clubs in the world. In fact, he’s performing at a Premier League Player of the Season level by some distance. He’s not perfectly happy. He’s worth a lot of money. And he’s not newly into his 30s.
Sound familiar? It should, because you were reading a lot of the same things this time last year about Mohamed Salah and Liverpool, but this is about one Bruno Fernandes at Manchester United.
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As fans consider what’s happened with Salah and his club since signing his new contract at Liverpool, let’s talk about a delicate situation that threatens to overturn a freshly-picked apple cart at Old Trafford.
Because Salah was the star of a Premier League title front-runner with a Premier League trophy in one back pocket and an European Cup in the other, while Manchester United’s been trying to get their rocket off the launch pad for a decade and would rather not strip it for parts and start anew.
And the key piece — maybe the two key pieces — of their current model are not spring chickens. Here’s how Bruno Fernandes has led Ruben Amorim’s team to the precipice of legitimacy, and why his situation is so dangerous for the club’s leadership.
Bruno Fernandes is out-of-position and out-of-this-world
There have been ups and downs for Bruno Fernandes since he exploded onto the Premier League scene with a January transfer from Sporting Lisbon, scoring 12 times with eight assists to almost single-handedly rescue Ole Gunnar Solskjaer from a mid-table season. That 2019-20 Red Devils group would not lose any of their final 14 PL games of the season and make a run to the Europa League semifinal with a team handing meaningful minutes to Daniel James, Jesse Lingard, Andreas Pereira, and Brandon Williams amongst others.
There have been ups and downs since then, but only on a relative scale as Fernandes has remained their best player. As tumult has lived in the manager’s seat and even found its way into the club’s ownership, Fernandes is their constant. He has a legitimate chance to go down as one of the club’s only all-time greats not to win the Premier League.
At times, Fernandes’ status as the team’s best player has been a sad sign of how far the club have sunk from their standards but that’s not the case this season. Fotmob has him rated ahead of Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, and Declan Rice as the best player in the Premier League (which, again, is saying something considering their teans rank Nos. 1 and 2 on the table). Opta puts him first in final third pass attempts by 21 passes over Dominik Szoboszlai, first in through balls by three over Bruno Guimaraes, and first in created chances by 14 over Jeremy Doku. He’s first in assists, too, by two. And perhaps most telling, he’s third in possessions won behind Elliot Anderson and Iliman Ndiaye.
And, again, Fernandes is playing with the heaviest load of responsibility in his career, set with Casemiro behind three forwards and a pair of wingbacks expected to fire forward with more than a modicum of abandon.
Does Man United have a choice when it comes to Fernandes future?
By most metrics, Fernandes has been one of the best players in the Premier League for his entire time at Old Trafford.
He turned 31 in September and in any other Manchester United generation might’ve been preparing to ease onto the next stage of his career.
Yet this is not any other Manchester United generation. The side appears to have stabilized under Amorim and has a reasonable chance of qualifying for the Champions League thanks to both performance and the lack of fixture congestion sanctioned by their miserable 2024-25 season.
And if you believe Fernandes from an interview in November, the Red Devils’ hierarchy would’ve accepted the money that would’ve come with a transfer this summer but were strongly shot down by Amorim. Maybe he’s feeling better on this improved Man United a few weeks later. Maybe not. Surely we’ll find out.
Fernandes leaving town would be a nightmare. Is it one they may choose to endure?
Man United have four field players in their 30s and all of them have been important to this season. Casemiro is the team’s oldest field player at 33 and Amorim has coaxed a career renaissance out of the former Real Madrid star. Luke Shaw, 30, has rung up the third-most minutes on the team and 32-year-old Harry Maguire, when healthy, has been the club’s only consistent alternative to pivotal center back Matthijs De Ligt.
Amorim’s system took so long to take root and Fernandes was part of that. He’s not the perfect component for it as a midfielder but the club invested in forwards and — let’s be real — Fernandes deserves a medal for the way he’s embraced a positional change that did not suit his comfort level. Fernandes is one of the best attacking midfielders of his generation but has run his shorts off getting stuck into duels and winning back the ball. What makes it so admirable is that he’s pretty average in that department — he’s in the 75th percentile of duels won but just the 49th percentile in duels won.
There’s another world where Kobbie Mainoo or another natural midfielder is in Fernandes’ current spot, a younger Casemiro next to Mainoo, and Fernandes is underneath Benjamin Sesko alongside Matheus Cunha, Mason Mount, or Bryan Mbeumo. And maybe that’s where he would be if Manuel Ugarte’s logical purchase had born more (or any fruit). But it has not and United have invested in forwards.
Manchester United fans have long praised players who put club over self. They’ve rationalized the exits of players from Roy Keane to David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo. When really good players don’t work there, they are “just not Man United’s standard.” Think we’re overstating Fernandes’ level? He’s likely to finish this season inside the Premier League’s career top 25 in assists.
Fernandes has fulfilled just about every personality metric for a Man United player and captain, taking the postgame microphone in good times and bad to reiterate what it means to play for the club and how real victories matter more than moral ones while trophies are the standard. Enough players have come to and gone from Manchester United with success on either side of their Old Trafford tenure to show that succeeding for the Red Devils seems to take a specific skill and mind set that not all players have in them. Fernandes has embraced. It didn’t work for Jadon Sancho, Antony, and Rasmus Hojlund.
Some will point to Salah’s current dry patch at Anfield and talk about the risks of signing older players to term, especially as Saudi Arabian clubs are reportedly looking at younger players for their big purchases. That’s a fair point but some players transcend that risk and even require it. With Ruben Amorim poised to give the club its best results since Jose Mourinho and its best stability post-Alex Ferguson, rocking the boat is a ridiculous idea unless Amorim himself wants it and can provide a solution beyond Fernandes.
If Fernandes wants to be there, United have to make him happy. Hey, maybe that means not committing to him and allowing him to enter into the last year of his contract. Probably not, but both the player and his manager have power here. And to quote Teddy KGB from “Rounders” twice, they need to allow Amorim to splash the pot when he pleases and when it comes to Fernandes they may have to pay that man his money.