Bruno Fernandes Is One Of Manchester United’s Greatest Ever Players | OneFootball

It’s very easy to get lost in the narratives the media tries to paint on players during this age of social media. Bruno Fernandes has been a victim of this perhaps more than a lot of players. The Manchester United captain, as well as his fellow team-mate Harry Maguire, accompanied by their former team-mate Paul Pogba, have all felt the vicious wrath of the media circus surrounding the world’s biggest club since they signed.

Manchester United have ruined a lot of players since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club. The owners and the establishment around each squad have consistently failed to create an environment that allowed players to flourish on a regular basis.

Nicky Butt recently highlighted the club’s decision to fail to reward Harry Maguire with a suitable partner when he joined as something that let him down as a player. There are various other examples of this across the board. Andre Onana was brought in to play a possession-based style of football, but United decided to play long nearly every single game after he came into the club.

United have ruined reputations and staggered careers. It’s not always been the club’s issue, and some players, to be frank, just failed to live up to the expectations they came with when they signed from the teams they came from. Bruno Fernandes, however, is not one of those players.

Numbers get downplayed a lot on social media. Rival fans like to lambast statistics when it comes to a player they don’t like, and Fernandes has been a victim of this more than any other player. The “Chances Created” stat, which has been synonymous with Fernandes since he signed for the club, is more often than not ridiculed when it pops up on Twitter, or X as it’s now called.

Fernandes consistently ranks among the top players in Europe for that statistic. In fact, since the Portuguese midfielder signed for the club in 2020, he has created 128 (568) more chances than any other player in the Premier League. Kevin De Bruyne is the player closest to him, and when you factor in the fact that Bruno has played in some of the worst United teams in history in that period, while De Bruyne played in some of the best teams in Premier League history, it’s a truly remarkable statistic to look at.

Factor all this in with having 187 goal contributions in 299 games for United, and you begin to realise why Fernandes deserves to be held in the same esteem as some of the best.

bruno fernandes underrated beyond belief

The 31-year-old has become one of the most underrated players in the division, and possibly the world. Saturday Social held host to a huge mare of a suggestion on Saturday prior to the game against Liverpool on Sunday, suggesting Fernandes would not get into the Liverpool team over Alexis Mac Allister. This is Bruno Fernandes, who is now the fifth-highest assist holder in Manchester United history, not being respected highly enough to get into a team ahead of a player who is yet to crack 20 assists in the Premier League despite playing 173 games.

Now, taking into account that Mac Allister is a different profile of player, the talent difference is still clear. Fernandes has his flaws, but they come from being a creator. And last season, playing in a two-man midfield, which is effectively in a Ruben Amorim system, two defensive number sixes, Fernandes conjured up 38 goal contributions in 58 games for the worst-performing Manchester United team EVER. That is just a level of effectiveness, and class Alexis Mac Allister, and really many other midfielders on the planet, for that matter, are just not capable of matching.

Bruno Fernandes has scored the most goals for a midfielder in Europe more times than anyone else since 2000, finishing with the most goals five times, which included a four-year swing from 2017-21, in which he scored a whopping total of 103 goals. Within that four-year period, after a 32-goal season for Sporting and Manchester United, he broke the record for the most goals scored in a Premier League season by a midfielder in all competitions (28), a record previously held by Frank Lampard. (27)

The critiques of his attitude

The criticisms levelled at Fernandes are his hand gestures during games. That’s been literally it since he joined. Nobody has ever been able to criticise his quality, so instead they turn towards hand gestures and his supposedly terrible attitude as a Manchester United captain. This is despite everyone who comes into contact with Fernandes specifically stating how much of a true professional he is, and how he embodies what it means to play for Manchester United.

And he does. Week in week out. Day in, day out. No injuries. No excuses. No Instagram posts. No transfer requests. Nothing. Just true love and affection for a club who have truly let him down. And a club that owes him a MAJOR honour before he decides to take his qualities and true talents elsewhere.

An all-time great

When you compare him to the number tens who have graced the league, have there been many better? De Bruyne is impossible to argue against due to his achievements and pedigree, but does he perform as Bruno has in a similar environment? And how much different would Manchester City have gotten on if Fernandes were in De Bruyne’s place, considering the numbers and class both players clearly possess? Mesut Ozil comes to mind, but Fernandes trumps him in terms of overall goal contributions, albeit Ozil has played 2000 fewer minutes, but did he ever play a second of those 2000 minutes as a number six?

When you look at true number tens, it’s Fernandes, De Bruyne, David Silva and Mesut Ozil. When you look at midfielders, he’s up there alongside the Steven Gerrards and the Frank Lampards. He’s better than a Juan Mata, a Santi Cazorla, a Joe Cole.

Bruno Fernandes is the upper echelon of Premier League midfielders, and in Manchester United history, you’re truly looking at Paul Scholes, Roy Keane and Bryan Robson as the three who are definitely better than him. David Beckham and Ryan Giggs are more wingers or wide midfielders than the central breed, so we’ll leave them out of the discussions for the time being.

The thing about all those midfielders, too, is that they had quality around them. They played in some of the greatest teams this league has ever seen. None of them has ever played in a Manchester United team as poor as Bruno Fernandes has. None of them have ever played in a Manchester United atmosphere from training ground to stadium as toxic and dysfunctional as Fernandes has. Do they have the same legacy now if they did? Do they perform as well as Fernandes has under those circumstances? It’s impossible to know, but a fair question to ask nontheless.

The point is, Fernandes is a gem in a collective that has dragged down the careers of so many. He is everything you want from a Manchester United player, and it will be the biggest miscarriage of justice if he leaves the club when the time comes without a Premier League or a Champions League next to his name.