Bruno Fernandes is “damaging” his Manchester United teammates as his on-field “antics” take their toll on the dressing room at Old Trafford.
The United skipper was sent off for the third time this season in the 2-0 defeat to Wolves, with a growing number of pundits and fans believing the clubs creator-in-chief may need to be sold in order for Ruben Amorim to rebuild them into a serious football team.
That’s predictably the view of outspoken former Liverpool captain Graeme Souness, who believes Fernandes is setting a terrible example for Kobbie Mainoo and the other young United stars.
Souness wrote in his Daily Mail column: ‘Ruben Amorim has many major calls to make going forward and arguably one of the biggest ones is does Bruno Fernandes have a future at Manchester United.
‘Fernandes is easily their most talented player with the ball. He is up there with anyone else in the Premier League at being able to play that killer ball but the rest of his game is lacking in a big way.
‘From his antics when the game is not going well to constantly throwing arms in the air, shrugging his shoulders at teammates – and he wears the armband.
‘What example does he set for Kobbie Mainoo, Amad Diallo and Alejandro Garnacho, young players all making their way in the game?’
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Souness believes Fernandes lacks the “mental toughness” to be a successful captain and believes a stronger dressing room would have told him to “shut the f*** up” by now.
Souness said: ‘I will never get the image out of my head of how he reacted to going three goals down at Liverpool when Manchester United lost 7-0 at Anfield.
‘He just threw the towel in, walking around pointing fingers at his teammates, shrugging shoulders. For the oldies that read this, I will quote the Billy Ocean song: ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ But Fernandes doesn’t.
‘His actions at Anfield showed me where his mental toughness was, nowhere. And that’s my point, just having ability isn’t enough to be a top player, he needs to show mental toughness, discipline and workrate when you’re up against it and that’s certainly what United are at the moment.
‘In successful dressing rooms, his negative reactions to his teammates’ shortcomings would have been ironed out in the very first week of training. The big players would have been all over him in training, physically and verbally, that is “Shut the f*** up and have some of that. And by the way have some of this!”‘
Head coach Ruben Amorim has now lost more games than he’s won in his short time at Old Trafford and Souness believes the Portuguese’s “body language” is telling ahead of a tough run of fixtures.
He added: ‘Looking and listening at the new manager talk about ‘surviving’ and watching his body language, he now fully realises the size of the task to put this giant football club back on track.
‘They’ve got in form Newcastle next, their biggest rivals Liverpool after that and an Arsenal team firing on all cylinders but now playing without their biggest threat in Bukayo Saka. It isn’t going to get any easier any time soon for United.’
