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Manchester United desperately need Bruno Fernandes – but can one man be enough to transform a club?

Carabao Cup semi-final defeat has helped expose United’s biggest flaw, but while his arrival has all the qualities to help fix the problem, doing it all himself is too much to ask of the Portuguese

Mark Critchley
Northern Football Correspondent
Thursday 30 January 2020 09:29 GMT
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For a manager who had just lost a two-legged semi-final to his club’s historic local rivals, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was in a chipper mood. He had, in fairness, just become the first visiting coach of any kind to beat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City twice at the Etihad. “It's difficult enough in 10 years to beat them twice,” he beamed.

Whatever struggles Manchester United may have against less ambitious opponents than City and whatever glaring limitations there may be to their manager’s preferred style of play, Solskjaer undeniably has a knack for producing results in one-off games against elite opponents.

City, Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and – of course – Paris Saint-Germain have all been beaten by United over the past year and a bit. Liverpool’s remarkable Premier League season is on course to end with the horrific realisation that Solskjaer denied them a unique perfect campaign. But stretch the sample size out and United are more likely to turn out second-best.

Over 180 minutes of this Carabao Cup semi-final, United lost 3-2 and were not deserving of a place in the Wembley final on the overall balance of play. The aggregate score over Solskjaer’s four matches against City is 6-4 in Guardiola’s favour. The same aggregate score after Solskjaer’s three games against Liverpool reads 3-1 to the champions-elect.

And despite needing to score goals in order to progress on Wednesday night, United rarely threatened. Nemanja Matic’s strike was one of just six attempts. Only four reached as far as Claudio Bravo’s goal. Only two were on target. None, bar a Harry Maguire header at the start of the second half, could be described as a significant chance. Like Matic’s goal, that opportunity did not come from open play.

This lack of creativity when the onus is on United to come out and play is a long-standing problem for Solskjaer but one that the club has finally spent money on fixing. So, could Bruno Fernandes be the solution? Solskjaer is even hopeful of giving Fernandes his debut on Saturday. “The boy is fit and ready to play, I would presume,” he said ahead of Thursday's announcement.

Fernandes has a lot of hype to live up to, though he arrives from Sporting Clube de Portugal with an 18-month record of raw output which rivals any midfielder in world football. Even though penalties and set piece-taking duties have helped him to his total of 47 goals over the last two campaigns, and even though the Primeira Liga is not the Premier League, the sheer scale of his numbers in Portugal suggests United’s shot volume and chance creation will be helped by having him in their line-up.

Fernandes’ shooting is particularly eye-catching. His 3.6 shots-per-game in the Primeira Liga since the start of the season is more than any Premier League midfielder over the same period. They are not always carefully chosen shots from promising positions. Two-thirds of his 60 attempts have come from outside the box, with the rest inside the penalty area but not as close as the six-yard box. In tight games like Wednesday’s though, shooting from range will at least ask questions of opposition goalkeepers.

He will help with attacking build-up play, too. Solskjaer complained on Wednesday that his players “spent too many seconds on the ball when we won it”. He has talked previously of playing ‘one quick pass’ which can catch an opposition defence on the hop. Fernandes is exactly that type of risky passer which Solskjaer craves. He is willing to sacrifice consistency and accuracy in possession for more ambitious balls in behind. Like his shooting, it will sometimes frustrate. Other times, it will win games.

It is easy to see what Fernandes could bring to United if he can translate what he did in Portugal to the Premier League, but the €55m-plus-achievable-add-ons question is whether any one player can transform this team. United need to turn this Solskjaer specialism of hard-fought, narrow victories into consistent and convincing wins by a consistent and convincing side, and that ultimately may have a great deal more to do with the style and approach of their manager than the make-up of their midfield.

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